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
Taglines Make Characters Memorable
Taglines or catch phrases make it easy for readers to remember a character. When they are done right, even years later, we recall the character with clarity.
How To Make Your Posts Facebook Friendly
You compose posts that are interesting and informative. You want people to read and share them. But have taken time to make your posts Facebook friendly?
How To Format Dialogue (includes examples)
New writers often struggle to properly format dialogue. The rules are strict and different than prose, but easily mastered. Here is what you need to know.
My Plot Development Tool: Scenes in Swimlanes
I experimented with a number of plot development tools and techniques, but none of them worked well for me. So I created my own using a spreadsheet. I call it Scenes in Swimlanes.
