Recently, I critiqued a submission for our weekly writer’s group meeting. I found an obvious error in this sentence: “I’ll be in the office till noon.”
Till is something you do to the ground, I thought, as I changed till to until.
After a moment, it occurred to me that, since the word appeared as spoken dialogue, maybe it should be written as ’til. The more I thought about it, I swore I’d seen til used without the apostrophe. Suddenly, I wasn’t sure about the whole thing.
I stopped critiquing and started researching.
It turns out, I was flat-out wrong from the start.
The first of these words to appear in English literature was till. It appeared around the year 800. Until doesn’t show up until around 1200 – created by appending the prefix und (meaning up to) to till.
That means that ’til is improper, since till was the original word.
I also learned that til is not a real word.
In summary, here are the rules:
Till is technically the most accurate.
Until is an acceptable (and more common) alternative.
‘Til should be avoided.
Til is not a real word.
Sources:
- Dictionary.com’s entry for till.
- The Maven’s Word of the Day for June 5, 1998 at RandomHouse.com
- World Wide Words post titled Until, Till and ‘Til.
Comments
![Spinner](https://firstmanuscript.com/wp-content/themes/Custom-Divi-Child/images/fm-spinner.svg")
Related Posts
How to Overcome Writer’s Block – A Compendium of Solutions
I’ve compiled the best tips on overcoming writer’s block from all around the web. If your stuck, here are some great ideas to help you break through.
How to Create Suspense: Leave ‘Em Hanging
In order to compose a page-turner, you’ve got to leave the reader hanging. Here are some tips for doing it well.
Scene Planning: Visualize Scenes Like a Master
I realized if I truly desired to master the arts of writing and storytelling, I needed to invest more time and energy planning before writing. These are the eight steps I now take before writing to visualize scenes.
Condense a Novel into One-Page Synopsis
Sooner or later you will need to condense your entire novel down to a one-page synopsis. For novelists, it’s a herculean task. Here’s how I did it.
