A Word, Please: āTill,ā a roughly 1,300-year-old word, predates its more popular cousin
I donāt see the contraction ātil much anymore. I used to see it a lot, but I suspect that ever-more-advance spell-checkers on our computers, phones and social media platforms have learned to flag or correct ātil.
Donāt see a problem with ātil? Technically, there isnāt one. In general usage, ātil is not an error. But in professionally edited writing and other formal situations, the correct single-syllable alternative to āuntilā has no apostrophe and takes two Ls: till.
Hereās the widely influential Associated Press Stylebook: ātill. Or until. But not ātil.ā
And hereās the equally influential Chicago Manual of Style: ātill. This is a perfectly good preposition and conjunction (open till 10 p.m.). It is not a contraction of until and should not be written ātil.ā
That bit about contractions is key. One might naturally assume that someone is just using a shortened form of āuntilā when he says ātill.ā But till doesnāt come from until at all.
āThe notion that till is a short form of until is erroneous,ā writes Merriam-Websterās Dictionary of English Usage. āTill is actually the older word, dating back to at least the 9th century.ā The longer āuntilā didnāt show up until a few centuries later and was first recorded around 1200.
Because ātillā isnāt a contraction or shortened form, itās no less formal or proper than āuntil.ā
āUntil is often said to have a somewhat more formal quality than till and to be the more likely choice at the beginning of a sentence or clause,ā Merriamās notes. āIn general, our evidence supports those observations. Note, however, that till, although less common than until, can still be perfectly at home in highly serious writing and at the beginning of a sentence.ā
June Casgrandeās answer to an oft-used subject/verb disagreement may not please every reader.
So to do as the pros do, use till or until. But style guides like AP and Chicago donāt apply to everyone. If you prefer ātil, itās still an option. If you want to make a contraction out of until by dropping the āunā and replacing it with an apostrophe, thatās a privilege enjoyed by every English speaker. You can contract anything you want. Heck, you can replace the first letter of my last name with an apostrophe if youāre so inclined, though my husband might want a word if you do.
But thereās still a way to make a mistake with ātil. When you type an apostrophe before ātil, auto-correct software programs may change your apostrophe to a single quotation mark, assuming thatās what you wanted. Itās not. You want a proper apostrophe, which is either straight or shaped a little like a backwards letter C, with the opening to the left. A single quotation mark curves the other way, like the letter C. So if you type ātil your software might change it to ātil, which is wrong. To fix this, you can either change your autocorrect settings or use my lazier method of just typing two apostrophes then deleting the first one.
I notice this problem less and less because I notice ātil less and less. Thatās a good thing because it suggests people are writing better. But itās also a bad thing because my job is to fix writing mistakes, and every time a computer gets better at fixing writing errors, I move one step closer to obsolescence.
But if a recent experience is any indication, I wonāt be out of work anytime soon. While editing a document in the Google Docs word processing program recently, I ran spell-checker. It stopped on the word till and offered a suggestion I have never heard in all my years of reading about language: til. One L, no apostrophe.
So it looks like my job is safe ā at least till computers get a little smarter.
June Casagrande is the author of āThe Joy of Syntax: A Simple Guide to All the Grammar You Know You Should Know.ā She can be reached at [email protected].
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