toward, towards. 1 As prepositions, toward is the more usual form in AmE. and towards the almost invariable form in BrE. But the distribution of the variants is subject to much variation. Routine examples: (UK) Madeleine ... led her guests towards EdmondP.P. Read, 1986; Miles Harrier was making his way...towards their rendzvousM. Bracewell, 1989. (US)'I'd hate to see you be so unforgiving toward me,' she said New Yorker, 1989: There is a new policy toward risk that is at least as important to American society as tort Daedalus, 1980

Burchfield, R.W. The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Toward (or, especially in Br.E., towards) means 'nearer and nearer, in the direction of'. The Landmark is not necessarily the endpoint of the path since the path may never reach the endpoint. etc.

Lindstromberg, Seth. English Prepositions Explained

Just to emphasize, that "towards" is by no means exclusively BE. I grew up in Ohio, and I have always used "towards." I would judge it to be fairly common in the United States especially in spoken AE, but can't point to any statistics. But in written texts, especially newspapers, the form without the s is almost universally preferred, probably because it is shorter.

I should have noted in my first posting, that "towards" is an accepted variation in AE, and it is not considered to be exclusively BE or substandard. I have never had an editor change my written text, but I suppose if I worked for a newspaper with its own style manual the editors would probably enforce "toward."