word choice - Use of "though" versus "however"


Consider the sentence



E-books are on the rise, but they haven't suppressed paper books though.



This usage seems to be quite common, but when I learned English I was taught to use "however" where I now read "though".
My questions on this use of "though" are:


Is this a new trend?
Is it restricted to American English?
Is "though" considered more colloquial than "however" ?


And on a syntactic level:
Do you put a comma before "though"?



Answer



You probably shouldn't use both but and though together like that, because you're saying the same thing twice; both words mark the clause as antithetical to what came before. So you should remove one or the other.


If you decide to use though, you need a comma before it.



I don't know whether it is new; it's just incorrect.


I don't think it is related to American English; I would simply interpret it as a typo, not as a conscious choice.


Both though and however are a bit informal at the end; though is better. The position of however in formal prose is rather at the beginning of a sentence, or after the first constituent.


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