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
Related Posts
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.
Writing Assistance? Even the FBI Will Help!
Being a newbie author, I needed all types of special assistance. To my surprise, I found nearly everyone I asked willing to help, even the FBI.
Start By Writing the Final Chapter First
My pantser ways led to insurmountable plot holes, which led to writer’s block, which I resolved by writing the final chapter first.
Choosing a Pen Name
When I learned that a half-dozen other authors using variations of my real name had books in print, I decided I needed a pen name.