My roommate asked me how to spell the first word of Till death do us part (for reasons that I don’t fully recall, but it definitely wasn’t because we were starting some odd sort of relationship). We agreed there were three possibilities:
til, till, ’til
I quickly responded that ’til was the logical choice, a truncation of until, with the missing un marked by an apostrophe. Open-and-shut case. Except that it wasn’t. It kept gnawing at me. Had I seen people use till in that context? Why would they do that? So I made the same mistake I often do, and I looked into exactly what the deal was. First off, let’s look at some proponents of each form:
‘Tils:
‘Til Tuesday, Aimee Mann’s semi-pivotal 80s band
‘Til Death, Brad Garrett’s follow-up to Everybody Loves Raymond
Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America
Tills:
Till Death Us Do Part, British sitcom that paved the way for All in the Family
From Dusk Till Dawn, movie featuring Salma Hayek dancing and (so it is rumored) some other plot as well.
(Til is hard to find attestations of — people seem to be pretty good at remembering to put apostrophes at the words when the first syllable is removed.) So why would anyone spell it till if it’s coming from until? Well, it turns out that till isn’t derived from until. Till and ’til are actually two different words with two different etymologies. Till is the earlier form, attested as early as 1330; Until is actually derived from till, not the other way around as in ’til (a backformation which showed up much later). Both are common, so it’s up to you which one you like. Till is commoner in Scotland, where it can be used like dative to in some situations, while ’til is commoner in the U.S. Take your pick.
Motivated Grammar 
81 comments
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November 28, 2007 at 11:03 am
renaissanceguy
I learned a lot here. Thanks.
January 7, 2008 at 10:03 pm
brad
As I am sitting here watching a crappy movie set in medieval times I realize that no one uses contractions when speaking. Come to think of it either did I when I played Dungeons & Dragons in high school. I’ve been looking around and can’t find any info on when it became fashionable to say “Come hither, wench, and I’ll make you my bride.” instead of the more 12th century sounding “Come hither, wench, and I will make you my bride.”
Any ideas on this? Or is this some crappy Hollywood writer’s (writers’?) crutch to make their dialog sound right for the time.
This has nothing to do with ’til or till but I like your site in general and you seem like a pretty smart guy and you talk real good. Yuk yuk yuk!
March 16, 2008 at 5:58 pm
strydogstrut
I’ve always wondered about this. Thank you.
June 11, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Warren
Thanks for that! I was just about to tell our marketing department that they made a big mistake on a poster but it turns out that they were correct… I’ve learned something too.
July 24, 2008 at 7:36 am
Timg
According to the Associated Press Stylebook, use “till” or “until,” but never “’til.”
July 24, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Gabe
brad: Sorry I didn’t notice your comment earlier, when you might have actually been looking for a response. I am not aware of any reason to suspect that medieval speakers avoided contractions. Of course, they’d’ve been using Middle English, so both “I’ll make you my bride” and “I will make you my bride” would almost certainly have been ungrammatical. The avoidance of contractions is probably due to the general preference for formal language in medieval settings; this preference arises because only formal texts have made it down to us now. Imagine, for instance, if in the future, religious scriptures were the only examples of English available. Then everyone would be unaware that we use contractions in our everyday lives.
Timg: Right, but why and so what?
November 17, 2008 at 6:26 am
Alex
Commoner? or, more common?
November 17, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Gabe
Alex: Either! I favor “commoner”, even though it’s syncretic with the noun “commoner” and could be slightly confusing at times.
September 29, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Frank Gorin
English is called a Germanic language, yet is chock-full of French —
much more, it would seem, than of German. What tenuous connection
makes English officially Germanic?
December 23, 2009 at 8:25 am
Tim
This completely and succinctly answered my question, thanks!
Now excuse me while I till my garden till I earn more cash to fill the till!
December 30, 2009 at 10:36 pm
Ron
Frank,
English is full of French-derived, even fully French words, as well as many derived from other romance languages. But having studied Spanish, French, Italian and German, and having used all but the former extensively as a classical singer, it is still my impression that English is MUCH more Germanic than Romantic.
January 7, 2010 at 6:27 am
Ralf
Hi Gabe,
Not related to the till, ’til or until discussion but because you mentioned until, I’d like to clarify (or is it clearify?) when I should use until, by or on when related to dates? For instance, should I say: “I need this report by Tomorrow morning” or “I need this report until Tomorrow morning”. There’s also the use of “on” which I believe it’s more for mentioning dates, isn’t, like: “On the 25th of November, there will be a lot of sun, although cold”. As non-native speaker, it is sometimes difficult to understand the nuances. Thank you, Ralf
January 10, 2010 at 2:10 pm
Lisa
Ralf,
The correct wording for your example is “I need this report by tomorrow morning.”
“Until” is generally used to describe an action that started in the past, continued for a duration, and stopped at the specified time such as “She typed until her fingers ached” (she typed for a long time and then she stopped because she had sore fingers) or”You cannot go outside until Monday” (you are staying inside for a few days and then when it’s Monday, you can go out). And, yes, I realize I’m using “until” as a conjunction and not as a preposition in the first case, but the same reasoning applies. “Till” can also be used as a conjunction as in the prhase “till the cows come home.”
By the way, the nuances are often just as difficult for native speakers to understand. In fact, we don’t UNDERSTAND as much as intuitively know what to do because we’ve heard it all our lives. I’m currently learning German, and I mix up my prepositions all the time because there’s never a one-on-one correspondence between different languages.
Hope this helps,
Lisa
P.S. – “Till” is rarely used in formal writing in the U.S. although it is often used in speech. It is still officially permissible, but if you’re writing an important letter to someone from the U.S., you’re safer using “until.”
January 11, 2010 at 1:07 am
Ralf
Thanks, Lisa! Now, I think I got the grip on it. Have a nice week. Cheers, Ralf
March 30, 2010 at 11:17 am
Till vs. ’til « Grammar Artifacts
[…] fellow WordPress blogger says that using till vs. ’til is a choice, and Michael Quinion writes that many style guides […]
April 1, 2010 at 6:19 pm
ITT: Weird and Wonderful (and 100% Correct) English
[…] google "till 'til" World Wide Words: Until, till and ’til Til v. till v. ’til v. until Motivated Grammar __________________ […]
August 26, 2010 at 12:27 pm
Mister Superstar
I have always wondered if till is even derived or taken in the same context from these words. Thank you very much!
November 26, 2010 at 10:52 pm
linguisticzn3rd
English is Germanic because of its grammatical structure, preferred word order, and accepted syntax, though, yes, many words are of Romance origin (particularly French in no small part due to the 1066 invasion that I’m sure we’re all quite familiar with).
January 4, 2011 at 12:05 pm
NoniB
I love words. I love the history of language and the way our (English, USA) language is constantly in motion, growing, shrinking, falling on its face sometimes, and otherwise making it necessary to check on my choices and spelling. Of course, English as spoken in this country drives me crazy sometimes due to its complete lack of rhyme or reason as displayed in some words. This site will be of enormous benefit to me and I’ve placed a quick link to it on my homepage. Thanks!
January 25, 2011 at 3:07 pm
leighton
Wow, thanks! I was actually agonizing over which version to use and your post simply explained it doesn’t matter. Of course, now I’m agonizing over which to choose instead of use. Sometimes you just can’t win.
January 25, 2011 at 3:48 pm
NoniB
In the interim between posts here, I came to an historic decision of my own on the choices and have gone with “til” because:
1. ‘until’ sometimes just sounds too formal, stuffy, or simply not quite right.
2. Till used to be my favorite but it does smack of cash registers and I’m not a shopper at heart.
3. Then there is ’til; and I don’t like it only because it slows me down when I’m keying with that double stroke for the apostrophe.
So:
For all of the smallest of reasons, I’m going with til. No nothin’ ‘cept the necessary three keystrokes. How about that, huh? (Are you cringing yet?)
February 9, 2011 at 7:38 pm
Was ist der Unterschied zwischen until, till und ’til? - Englisch lernen
[…] es noch genauer wissen möchte, kann u.a. hier und hier mehr zu diesem Thema […]
March 26, 2011 at 11:15 pm
Wazzert
Although over fifty out of every one hundred English words found in books come from Old Norman French or Latin, the belief that English is, therefore, not a Germanic one is wrong. In the everyday speech of those whose mother tongue is English, nine out of ten of their spoken words have their roots in the Old English and Old Norse that their forefathers spoke over one thousand years ago in Anglo-Saxon England, as do all the words that I have written up to now. I can go on doing this, freely writing and speaking only in words that come from Old English or Old Norse, for a long time until I come to something that I wish to talk about that was unknown in olden days, such as a boat that goes under the sea and does not sail in the whale’s wake. Then I must say “submarine” instead of “underseaboat”. Why I have to do this, I do not know: those folk across the sea in the land that they call their Fatherland say “underseeboat” in their mother tongue, but we English like to talk about new things with words that the Romans and Greeks spoke. I shall end now, having written only one word that is not of English stock, namely “submarine”.
March 26, 2011 at 11:29 pm
Wazzert
I forgot to add that in the folk speech of Northwest England “til” means “towards” as in: “He went til her”. That’s what “til” means in Danish as well. The North of England was known as the Danelaw because it was where, over one thousand years ago, the Danes were allowed to live under their own law. (The word “law” is from Old Norse). That’s also why in the North of England “mountains” are “fells”, “streams” are known as “becks”, “children” are “bairns” and bairns “skrike” loudly whenever they are very upset. Again, only one word above that is not Germanic: “mountain”. And when in my homeland, I seldom say that word: I say “the fells”.
September 19, 2011 at 7:28 am
Danielle Ella Mae
Thanks for the info :)
November 6, 2011 at 12:47 pm
Arrant Pedantry » Blog Archive » Till Kingdom Come
[…] and may well think that the correct form is 'til, as Gabe Doyle of Motivated Grammar did in this post four years ago, though he checked his facts and found that his original hunch was […]
January 14, 2012 at 6:56 am
AnWulf
@NoniB … I’m with you. I dropped the ‘ years ago and the second ‘l’ never made any sense either. In fact, for a long time, I thought that was a typo by the writer! lol I wonder if til/till is a US/British difference. I see til, ’til a lot in the US … not so much till.
@wazzert … Belike that yu kno as well I the grounds for the benoting “submarine” and other Latinates rather than words with Anglo-Germanic roots.
January 24, 2012 at 9:04 pm
josh
TILL is what you do in the garden. It is never right to use it otherwise in my book:)
February 19, 2012 at 1:23 pm
Debbie
Loved this site!!
March 12, 2012 at 1:26 pm
Mollie Player
Watch your apostophe. In the examples you gave, it is backwards.
March 16, 2012 at 5:49 am
Goatlips
There’s no, “Take your pick”, about it! ‘Til is wrong, because the short form of ‘until’ already existed, before the word ‘until’ even existed!
Take your pick: Till or until, but never ’til (Oh dear, my iPhone just tried to autofill ’till! Dumb Yanks!).
I just wish you dumb Yanks would stop thinking ‘then’ and ‘than’ were the same word! You seem to be spreading your illiteracy around the world! :(
March 16, 2012 at 7:41 pm
LoboSolo
@Goatlips … Autofill typically ignores a leading apostrophe. That’s why it autofilled ’til to ’till. … As for illiteracy, I wish the Brits would remember that the subjunctive form “if I were” still exists … It hurts my ears to hear your politicians (supposedly learned folks) say “if I was”.
March 26, 2012 at 9:09 pm
Raubhautz
Very interesting site, and topic. I learned a lot by reading this!
May 7, 2012 at 10:25 pm
Geordie
It’s like the linguists’ version of a startrek convention in here! I love it, and I’ve learnt a lot.
July 16, 2012 at 1:15 pm
Quora
Do you say till the break of dawn or to the break of dawn?…
Among its many meanings, the preposition “to” can refer to a point reached at the end of a period of time. So you can say “to the break of dawn” meaning that something would be ongoing until the break of dawn. Similarly you can say from 2011 to 201…
September 2, 2012 at 6:34 am
Jezza
To all our Yank friends, ignore the limey above – sorry Goatlips! The reason that English is now the common language of Earth is due to it’s fluidity, flexibility and adaptability (and, perhaps, a little colonial expansion). You guys keep using it the way you want to, and we’ll do the same. It’s what keeps the language evolving. The moment a language stops evolving, it’s dead.
September 2, 2012 at 6:34 am
Jezza
Sorry – meant to add, great site :)
September 10, 2012 at 7:19 am
ewolf
So does the dang apostrophe go from left down to right, or right down to left? when I try to type it twice I get both of them, when I delete the left-down-to-right one it kicks out the right one and gives me what I ‘think’ is the incorrect one (left down to right)
October 20, 2012 at 10:11 pm
Bill Malcolm
Go back to the early1960s, and it was always till and until. Then, advertising folk, eager to look daring, started to use ’til, just to appear breezy. And like nite for night, we were done.
October 30, 2012 at 9:31 pm
amkaplan
You’re basing your conclusions on the names of a TV show, a band, and a book? Seriously? Ever hear of a dictionary?
December 2, 2012 at 10:12 pm
BreadPuddn
I was just thinking of this. (Some very rude posters above – wow!). Contrary to what another poster said, the apostrophe is not backwards in the example, and I’m thrilled to find someone who knows the correct direction to place it in this instance — facing the direction of the omitted letters.
Anyway, today I saw an accent pillow for sale that read, “Don’t open till’ Christmas.” (Accent after the second L.) Ack!
December 3, 2012 at 3:44 pm
raubhautz
Yes, we are now at a point where where even the publishers/editors do not know proper grammer and try to rely on their word processor way too much. These are sad times indeed.
December 12, 2012 at 5:40 am
Word Wednesday: Till - Witty Online Writer and Editor
[…] Motivated Grammar: Til v. till v. ’til v. until – What strikes me the most about this post (other than the super-cool blog title Motivated Grammar) is that it was published in 2007 – FIVE years ago. I’ve been an editor for at least TWICE that long…and this was new to me! […]
December 12, 2012 at 7:46 am
Beth
Thank you, thank you! I love a good grammarian!
December 28, 2012 at 2:46 pm
Stuart Thomson
@josh “Till is what you do in the garden.”
Or, if you’re Seamus Heaney, you employ both meanings at once. (From his excellent poem Digging).
“I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.”
Usage of “till” seems to stretch out to Ireland, too.
January 9, 2013 at 10:47 pm
dainichi
@Wazzert
> I forgot to add that […] only one word above that is not Germanic: “mountain”
Just to nitpick, “add” sounds Latin and non-Germanic to me, but I could be wrong. I can’t think of any good replacement of Germanic origin…
Also, if you drill down to the level of morphemes, the plural -s is, AFAIK, a loan from the Normans which it is quite hard to speak English without, since it spread even to Germanic stems.
January 10, 2013 at 6:01 am
Mand
Regarding till and ’til….the remark in the first comment…sorry, but in America, they use till not ’til. I am British and I am a teacher and I can’t abide American English….sorry to Americans here. And by the way…you should say the most common…NOT the commoner…a commoner is a person of normal people not noble or royal people….
Plus Americans……please use your comparatives properly…..another problem in the US…..eg….the most pretty = wrong….should be the prettiest….I could go on…..come and go……bring and take…..go/went……people using spaces between punctuations etc…come on people….
January 10, 2013 at 6:04 am
Mand
To Anwulf…Till is American…and I think you have got it wrong…. most Americans use till
January 10, 2013 at 6:17 am
Mand
To Lisa….Till is always written in American english……I have many American relatives they all use till….
May 10, 2013 at 1:42 am
Monica Pienaar
Reblogged this on Wings in the Wind and commented:
I’m busy writing a story and wondered about the use of ’till so I decided to Google it (don’t I always?). I came across this and found it very insightful! :)
May 10, 2013 at 6:06 pm
LoboSolo
@Mand
2010 May, James Parker, “Revenge of the Wimps”, The Atlantic Monthly, volume 305, number 4, page 38:
EVEN IF YOU MAKE ME WRITE IN THIS EVERY DAY ***TIL*** THEY LET ME OUT OF HERE
2008 Winter, Michael Copperman, “Gone”, Arkansas Review, volume 39, number 3, Arkansas State University, page 139-145:
Let him wander round and kids gone meddle him ***til*** he get to fighting again.
May 11, 2013 at 1:28 am
LoboSolo
@Mand … You should check the OED:
common |ˈkämən|
adjective ( commoner , commonest )
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/common
August 19, 2013 at 4:12 am
Seb
Hi people,
Mand is right about comparatives:
monosyllabic words take -er and -est:
Tall -> tall-er -> (the) tall-est
disyllabic, trisyllabic and polysyllabic more and most:
Common (com-mon) -> more common -> (the) most common
Remarkable (Re-mar-ka-ble) -> more remarkable -> (the) most remarkable
In defense of the Americans, bad grammar is widely in use here in the UK too. Anyway that is just what language does, it flows and it changes in time and in space.
Love to all,
Seb x
August 22, 2013 at 11:58 am
RAf
But Seb, if that’s the rule Mand is working with, then he’s right for using “most common” but simultaneously wrong for using “prettiest” (cf. his claim “the most pretty = wrong…should be prettiest”). So even though YOU may hew to that particular tradition, it doesn’t seem to be the basis for HIS usage (or his certainty that everyone else is wrong).
August 22, 2013 at 12:24 pm
Seb
Hi RAf,
disyllabic adjectives ending in -y and -er are exceptions and behave like monosyllabic adjectives, hence ‘prettier’ and ‘prettiest’.
I forgot to mention that :)
I’m late too, nice to not be the only one though.
x Seb
August 22, 2013 at 12:02 pm
RAf
PS I just noticed I’ve somehow found this thread even though it started in 2007 and Mand’s comments were in May! Feels funny to be so late to the party, but I’m glad to have found it (though concerned that I can’t seem to make myself stop clicking on posts and get back to work). Summary: Gabe, I think you’re my new favoritest blogger.
October 4, 2013 at 9:52 pm
Candy
So… where does ‘Till the farm’ come in? You see, I’d always been taught that ’til was the short form of ‘until’ and till meant nothing more than turning up dirt, and that was that….
I hate to question my PhD educated, English professor parent (oh yes, many beatings for ending sentences with prepositions as a child, lol)…
Till you answer my question….
:)
October 17, 2013 at 5:46 pm
Adrian
re: mand
I learned long ago that words of two syllables have not rule for comparative, only historical usage and may sound. Hence prettier, more common could be more pretty and commoner depending on local usage. I prefer to ask ‘which is the more common form?’
Also re:linguisticzn3rd remember that many Germanic words have early Latin roots not just from later French. For example,The word ‘wall’ is from Saxon and earlier from Latin ‘Vallum’. German also has a word with the same roots as ‘mural’.
October 29, 2013 at 8:30 am
g33ksquared (@g33ksquared)
Thank you for this! I noticed that everyone at work used til and I realized that I have been typing till and was beginning to seriously doubt myself when I thought about what it was short for. It is interesting that the word Till is actually not a truncation of until. Thanks so much for clarifying! :)
November 8, 2013 at 9:37 am
Mario Hernandez
The author giving advice on grammar and the proper usage of a particular word while using “commoner” instead of the correct “more common.” “Commoner” describes a person and is NOT a correct form of “more common.”
Sorry.
February 2, 2014 at 8:25 pm
Joe
Your response to ‘timg’ to my eyes reads a bit rude. He was adding more proponents to your list. That’s ‘so what.’
March 21, 2014 at 12:56 pm
cjstewart1965
I always thought it was ’til for until and till as in till the ground. So what is correct? Arrggg!
April 4, 2014 at 11:02 am
seedydeedee
‘Til is the only one that makes sense to me. Sometimes I wish there was just a single right answer! :)
June 27, 2014 at 12:16 pm
Fu's Truly
brad: I seem to remember reading in high school that JRR Tolkien was a bit of a grammar nazi and for whatever reason thought contractions were disgusting, so he avoided using them. I would put my bet on that being the source of that perception.
I’m pretty late to the party. Hope this is of use to someone.
July 7, 2014 at 1:36 pm
Word Wednesday: Till | Blue-Brown Books
[…] Motivated Grammar: Til v. till v. ’til v. until – What strikes me the most about this post (other than the super-cool blog title Motivated Grammar) is that it was published in 2007 – FIVE years ago. I’ve been an editor for at least TWICE that long…and this was new to me! […]
August 10, 2014 at 5:54 pm
Goatlips
There’s only two choices:
Till or Until.
Do some research! Till existed first – then later, ‘un’ was added and the word Until was born.
Till is already the short form! How is ’til shorter? Till is virtually 3 characters (as L is a double tap of a key). ‘Til is 4 characters, including messing around with a symbol shift key!
Dumb Yanks!
Till or Until. That is all. There is no debate.
September 4, 2014 at 8:37 am
Nicole Grove
It seems ’til would be the more proper word to use. The other, till, has more than one meaning.
September 21, 2014 at 11:34 am
Short Sunday: Until …
[…] Until I heard a piece on the radio a few years ago. I can’t find that now, but here is an interesting post about it from Motivated Grammar: […]
October 3, 2014 at 10:37 am
Kenneth
@Goatlips, you seem to have a an unjustified prejudice towards fellow english speakers who reside in different locations. I assure you that there are proper english speakers on both continents and that we are both plagued with grammatically uneducated people constantly butchering our beloved language.
With that being said, “There ARE only two choices” (The contraction “There’s” would be incorrect because “there is” is singular and “there are” is a plural comparison)
Till or Until.
I use both depending on the situation. Till is used in every day speech. Until is used in more formal settings or if I really need to drive the point home to someone.
October 3, 2014 at 10:40 am
Kenneth
i blame the “a an” on keyboard error. Should just be “an” unjustified prejudice. Thank you and have a nice day.
January 13, 2015 at 9:37 am
pedant
@goatlips @kenneth. Surely there is only one choice and that choice has two, or three (till, ’til, or until) options. Two choices would be indicated by another set of options like whether to use till, ’til or until in a sentence with colour or color…
January 14, 2015 at 9:29 am
kennethwp
Till came before until. ’til is a literary shortening of until trying to create a better phonetic flow. Till and Until have a very slightly (again, “very” slight) difference.
Etymology
According to the entries for till and until in the Online Etymology Dictionary, until would have derived from till:
until = und + till, where und was an Old English word meaning “as far as, up to”.
till O.E. til (Northumbrian), from O.N. til from P.Gmc. *tilan (..) A common preposition in Scandinavian, probably originally the accusative case of a noun now lost except for Icelandic tili (..) the noun used to express aim, direction, purpose.
until c.1200, from O.N. und “as far as, up to” (related to O.E. end; see end) + till “until, up to” (see till). Originally also used of persons and places. Cf. Swed. intill, Dan. indtil. The Mod.Ger. equivalent, bis (O.H.G. biaz), is a similar compound, of O.H.G. bi “by, at, to” and zu “to
January 25, 2015 at 9:44 pm
Goatlips
“You guys keep using it the way you want to, and we’ll do the same. It’s what keeps the language evolving. The moment a language stops evolving, it’s dead.” @Jezza
WTF!? You’ve got that completely arse-about-face. It’s when bastardisations, slang and made-up words, like ’til, replace the etymons that at a language dies. A language which* does not evolve would never die.
Till or until. ’til tries to be an abbreviation, but is slower to type than till, so it’s pointless.
*Yeah, I’m less sure about using which or that. Tried to learn it once but the website started talking English degree-level gibberish, using terms which/that you’d obviously not understand if you were looking up the difference between which & that.
January 25, 2015 at 9:57 pm
Goatlips
“PRESCRIPTIVISM MUST DIE!”
At the top of a page purporting to be interested in grammar?
…Okay, you’re obviously schizoid. Goodbye.
February 12, 2015 at 11:54 am
Mark Paulson
Thanks for clarifying this. I hate your use of commoner. Even though it’s legitimate, it feels so wrong. I’ve only seen it used for peasants. Who knows, maybe you’ll start a trend. Cheers!
July 10, 2015 at 11:25 am
Diane Kallgren
This from someone who misuses the word ‘commoner.’ I don’t know if I buy her explanation.
September 8, 2015 at 4:45 am
scribblyroo
Reblogged this on ScribblyRoo's Writings and Things and commented:
Not knowing this has bugged me for years!! I can now rest easy.
October 22, 2015 at 8:11 am
Robert Lent
Languages only die when they are no longer used. And it is only in the dead languages that prescriptivism makes sense. ‘Til may have come about because people mistakenly thought it was a short of until, but that’s the way languages change over time. If enough people use it, it becomes correct. Descriptivism is often incorrectly described as “do whatever you want”, but what it really is is describing how the language is actually used. Language does have rules, but unless it is a dead language, those rules are discovered, rather than decreed.
November 8, 2016 at 11:21 am
#WordUse Series: ’Til? Till? Until?
[…] is an interesting post about it from Motivated Grammar. The writer of this blog, a linguist, thought as I did, until he looked […]
June 7, 2017 at 6:21 am
Chris
Hi Gabe! I was directed to your website after performing a Bing search for “til” with the hopes of finding an explanation like this. Thank you so much for your insight and help! I pray and hope you and your team have a blessed rest of 2017 and beyond! Take care, and may the Lord’s peace be with you! ~ John 11:25-26
February 7, 2019 at 11:05 am
hundetegn
Thank you.