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'Daylight Savings' Is Grammatically Incorrect (qz.com) 312

Posted by msmash from the things-to-ponder dept.
A reader shares a report: We talk about time like it's money, and that may explain why we say "Daylight Savings Time," capitalizing the concept to emphasize its awesomeness. After all, who wouldn't want to be able to save hours like cash? The phrase "Daylight Savings Time," though commonly used in Australia, Canada, and the US, is technically incorrect. Time and Date, a website devoted to all things chronological, posits that the plural "savings" became popular because it's used in everyday contexts, like "savings account." The grammatically correct usage is "daylight saving time." The expression is singular and not capitalized, according to the US Government Publishing Office style guide. The GPO provides the guidance, "d.s.t., daylight saving (no 's') time."
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'Daylight Savings' Is Grammatically Incorrect More

'Daylight Savings' Is Grammatically Incorrect

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  • Also... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mats Svensson ( 1745652 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @09:45AM (#55463207)

    Whats the deal with "man-holes"?

  • Grammar Nazi's Win! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Austerity Empowers ( 669817 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @09:45AM (#55463213)

    We now have a grammar nazi post on the front page. Slashdot has really evolved, from the nascent grammar troll posts, through the mercurial grammar nazi years, to a full fledged front page grammar post.

    I'm going to continue to say Daylight Savings Time, because that is how nearly everyone says it, and alter the language irrevocably. In 50 years, hopefully we will have done away with daylight savings time completely and this topic will be dead, but if we have not, Daylight Savings Time will be the correct way to say it.

    • We now have a grammar nazi post on the front page. Slashdot has really evolved, from the nascent grammar troll posts, through the mercurial grammar nazi years, to a full fledged front page grammar post.

      I'm going to continue to say Daylight Savings Time, because that is how nearly everyone says it, and alter the language irrevocably. In 50 years, hopefully we will have done away with daylight savings time completely and this topic will be dead, but if we have not, Daylight Savings Time will be the correct way to say it.

      It's like my pet peeve, the term "offside" in sports has morphed to become "offsides"... Now even the veteran sports announcers are using it. Like it or not, its become part of the vernacular so we are stuck with it and may as well get used to it.

    • Remember when American Telecom and Telegraph renamed itself AT&T? Did you know DVD actually stands for DVD?

      I'm just going to call it DST.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Maybe it's part of the 20th anniversary celebrations. We used to have some great holy wars over Imperial vs. Metric, the merits of DST and which endianess was best.

      By the way, I typed this post in EMACS, the greatest OS^H^H editor ever written. This kind of quality is impossible in Vi.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by c ( 8461 )

      We now have a grammar nazi post on the front page.

      Let's just file this one under "news for nerds" rather than "stuff that matters" and move on with out lives...

    • We now have a grammar nazi post on the front page..

      The headline is also grammatically incorrect. It should read more like, "Daylight Savings" is a Grammatically Incorrect Term.

      But do terms need to be grammatically correct? They are what they are.,

    • Re:Grammar Nazi's Win! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mjwx ( 966435 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @11:43AM (#55464129)

      We now have a grammar nazi post on the front page. Slashdot has really evolved, from the nascent grammar troll posts, through the mercurial grammar nazi years, to a full fledged front page grammar post.

      I'm going to continue to say Daylight Savings Time, because that is how nearly everyone says it, and alter the language irrevocably. In 50 years, hopefully we will have done away with daylight savings time completely and this topic will be dead, but if we have not, Daylight Savings Time will be the correct way to say it.

      This, there is a lot of phrases and words in languages that are grammatically incorrect, however they're in the language because they're in popular use. Languages are not a science, they're also living things and change over time. Languages are based on what people use, not what is set out in a book of rules. Heaps of words are completely wrong like "ain't" which is a bastardisation of "isn't" and not a contraction of anything (isn't == is not) but its in popular use in some places much the same as "innit" in the UK (also a bastardisation of isn't).

      After that we have localisations, a word can mean different things in different places. Americans and Australians use the word "pants" to refer to any pair of clothing with separate legs, however in British English it refers exclusively to underwear (pants are trousers here). Neither definition is strictly incorrect, it just depends on where you are as to which one you use.

      And that mein Grammar Nazi's is just the tip of the mother fucking iceberg.

      English is an incredibly fault tolerant language. You can use completely the wrong sausage and everyone will still understand what you bacon. This is what makes the language so powerful and widely used. No other language in the world has the same robustness which is why it will remain the language of business for a long time.

      Finally, this is far from the worst issue with grammar these days. Priorities people, get some.

    • Came here to comment about this... grammar nazis can suck my dick, and they certainly don't belong on the main page.
  • This might be the least relevant Slashdot post I've ever seen. And I'm proud to be a part of it.

    There's not even an argument for the abolition of the time change and the programming task ahead if such a decision is made!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by JustOK ( 667959 )
      At this point, the only reason we still have time changes at all is because of powerful lobbying by the likes of www.timeanddate.com and momentjs.com and so on.

  • Totally (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jfetjunky ( 4359471 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @09:49AM (#55463241)
    Because that's TOTALLY why everyone hates it, the incorrect grammar.

  • Get rid of it. (Score:5, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @09:50AM (#55463253) Homepage Journal
    I was always a proponent of Daylight Saving Time. Moving all the clocks ahead or back an hour was always a lot of fun.

    This, though, ruins it for me. I think we should ban DST altogether.

    • Re:Get rid of it. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by acoustix ( 123925 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @10:00AM (#55463343)

      I think we should be on DST year round. I want my sunlight at the end of the work day instead of the beginning.

      • Re:Get rid of it. (Score:5, Funny)

        by Virtex ( 2914 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @10:11AM (#55463453)

        I want my sunlight at the beginning AND end of the work day. Can't we just fall back in the mornings and spring forward in the afternoon? The shorter work day would be nice too!

      • I think we should be on DST year round. I want my sunlight at the end of the work day instead of the beginning.

        Id give you all my mod points, if I had any.

        (Sorry about the missing apostrophe - a guy further up the page stole it)

      • So, on a 32-hour work week [johnmoserforcongress.com], would you prefer 6h24m days starting work at 10:30am, or four 8-hour days and a three-day weekend every week?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by sootman ( 158191 )

        Do you want your kids walking to school in the dark at 8am all winter long?

        • Do you want your kids walking to school in the dark at 8am all winter long?

          Is this one of those "won't somebody think of the children" posts? I don't fall for the "do _____ under the guise of the children".

          And yes, I do have elementary school age children.

      • Or we could just change our work hours accordingly. That way we don't need DST temporarily or otherwise and 12pm and 12am would still approximate noon and midnight.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by plopez ( 54068 )

      In fact we could have it 6 or 10 times a year. Randomly. Just giving people 2 to 3 days notice. Also, change your batteries every time as well. The battery lobby would be all for that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      DST is just a pain in the arse, with almost no benefits.

      Anything that used a clock gets screwed by it, e.g. computers that have to deal with the same hour happening twice or a one hour gap.

      Humans have to manually change their clocks twice a year, although personally I don't bother and just live with them being an hour out. I guess it was less of an issue when clocks were shit and needed to be corrected regularly anyway, but these days I adjust mine maybe twice a decade at most.

    • I was always a proponent of Daylight Saving Time. Moving all the clocks ahead or back an hour was always a lot of fun. This, though, ruins it for me. I think we should ban DST altogether.

      Well, you gotta admit it would be rather funny if a grammar war was what ultimately ended it...

    • Let say, I will vote for any presidential candidate who promised to keep daylight time whole year...

  • I won't beat the "How is this news?" drum, because that's already been hit multiple times. What I want to know is, why now? We're nowhere close to the change from or to DST, so what brought this up to begin with?

  • This is Slashdot

    Who Tango Foxtrot cares about grammer or spelling

    I would be more concerned about the actual fact that we don't actually 'save' any daylight

    • Perhaps it should be called "Daylight Shifting Time". That does away with the "s" problem, and fixes your issue as well.

  • Try to keep up, please (Score:3)

    by fibonacci8 ( 260615 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @09:51AM (#55463265)
    What's the grammatically correct emoji to express daylight saving time?
  • This bothers me less than people confusing abbreviations for standard and daylight saving time per time zone. I will propose times for meetings in EDT and get back responses with EST. I suppose that also can still be understood, but is more inaccurate than a grammatical error.
  • One of the issues with saying d.s.t should be lowercase is that time zones are regularly capitalized. Eastern Standard Time becomes Eastern Daylight Time. Now people have in their heads that "Daylight" is a proper noun. I'm on board with dropping the "s" but I'll likely continue capitalizing. Until people start regularly following US GPO standard on capitalization of timezones, I think this is probably a fight lost.

  • Best video on the subject ever: https://youtu.be/k4EUTMPuvHo [youtu.be]

    OK, only video on the subject, likely, but still the best ever. ..bruce..

  • Daylight Savings has a bit of twang to it, as in, "Wez iz savings sum daylight"

    --
    "Time Out!" - Mom

  • Let's just keep it all year and stop changing the time.

  • No DST here (Score:3)

    by Malc ( 1751 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @10:05AM (#55463389)

    We don't have DST here you insensitive clods. It's just "summer time" or "GMT". I've always wondered why you provincial folks refer to it as DST. I'd be very happy for it to be summer time all year around!

  • Of all the things wrong with .... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @10:06AM (#55463393) Journal
    Of all the things that are wrong with daylight saving time, the grammar mistake is the least important one.

    There is no reason to continue this anachronism any more.

    Steven Pinker last book The better angels of our nature talks about how much the cost of artificial light has fallen in the last three hundred years.

    It is high time we get rid of it.

    • LED lighting is one of the greatest things ever invented. There's basically no downside.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      Steven Pinker last book The better angels of our nature talks about how much the cost of artificial light has fallen in the last three hundred years.

      The absolute cost is one thing, that would make the absolute gain less. But it also matters than a few hundred years ago most people were farmers in the field and when it got dark you went to bed. Today the premise that shifting it matters is highly dubious, like here in Norway it's now pitch dark out and it's 6 PM. Does it matter? No, the lights are on and they'll stay on until I head to bed. As long as the daylight hours fall sometime between getting up and going to bed it doesn't matter when, because I'l

  • You should stick to the correct phrase "British Summer Time".

    (Insert your own joke about there being two days of actual summer in the UK here).

    • (Insert your own joke about there being two days of actual summer in the UK here).

      Oh, you guys have gained a day! Is that because of global warming?

  • What's even more useful... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @10:07AM (#55463415) Journal

    ...are the people who take the time to point this out.

    They believe that they're just being helpful, pointing out a common grammatical mistake of usage.

    What they're really doing is showing the rest of us that they're annoying as fuck so we can avoid them generally.

    Grammar Nazis are like the intellectual equivalent of skunk smell, warning us all away from something we REALLY don't want to experience any more closely.

    It's socially a very useful thing. Thank you, Grammar Nazis.

    • Cart meet horse.

      I'm of the opinion that the "right" English is what is in common usage, rather than what some pedantic sot digs out of a book written by some other pedantic sot ages ago. I'd rather have an evolving growing language than a locked down regulated one with gatekeepers and enforcers shouting down every new variation and mis-usage.

      It is not like the English language, with all its esoteric rules fell from the sky fairy on golden plates. Rather usage got documented and became a festering field up

  • It's going to be a real drag if I have to write daylight saving (no 's') time every single time I want to mention it. That's sort of like "News for Nerds (no 'z'), Stuff that Matters."

  • ... because we were all just SO *confused* about it!

    I can sleep easy now, am totally plussed.

  • and this seems pretty nitpicky to me.

  • Never mind the grammar, ghowever you spell and capitalise it the term is complete nonsense.

    Firstly, DST is generally applied in the summer when daylight hours are actually in surplus. If there's any point in the year where we need to save daylight, it is the winter.

    Secondly, DST doesn't actually save any time. It may look like you have got a bit of extra daylight in the evening, but it turns out that is because it was robbed from the morning. The whole thing is some kind of scam.

  • Just for the sake of argument (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @10:30AM (#55463607)
    Totally agreed grammar nazi posts don't deserve to be on the front page.

    But isn't it called a "savings account" (plural) because you deposit money you've saved on multiple occasions into it? Likewise, shouldn't it be "daylight savings" because you save daylight on multiple days? i.e. If we only changed the clocks for one day, then it would be "daylight saving time." But since we change the clocks for multiple days, doesn't that make "daylight savings time" correct?
  • Are we to the point where we're making pedantry into an actual story!? Is there nothing better to post on the goddamned front page!?

  • Not a grammatical error (Score:4, Informative)

    by bipbop ( 1144919 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @10:35AM (#55463647)

    The plural attributive construction is well established as standard, and has been on the rise for the past 70 to 80 odd years. It's standard everywhere, but is somewhat more common in British English than American English. If the OP were interested, they could read about this topic in A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (Quirk et al 1985), where it is covered starting on page 1333, although somehow I doubt they're interested.

  • Daylight Wasting Time (Score:3)

    by crow ( 16139 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @10:37AM (#55463677) Homepage Journal

    I'm just trying to get everyone to call the winter shifted time "daylight wasting time." I don't care about the capitalization, though considering that other periods of time, like months or days, are capitalized, it might be logical to capitalize it. Perhaps I should trademark it and capitalize on the merchandising. :)

  • Old saying (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cwsumner ( 1303261 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @10:46AM (#55463757)

    To use an old Sioux saying:

    "Daylight saving time is like cutting a foot off of your blanket and sewing it on to the other end, and thinking you have made it longer!"

  • It isn't a grammar issue for whether to use "saving" or "savings". It's what the official name of the thing is that matters. If the relevant authorities say it is "saving", it is "saving". If they agree that "savings" is okay, then "savings" is okay. It's about naming things correctly, not grammar. Whether the name makes grammatic sense of not *does not matter*. Names need not make any sense whatsoever. They just *are* and behave like any other noun grammatically no matter how they were formed.

    What is clear

  • Is it Keith Richard or Keith Richards?
  • DST is a sham and should be killed off already. The bonus is that it will fix the grammatical issue because nobody will need to use the term anymore.

  • Call it what you will. Pass laws if you like. The reality is that the sun does not care and no daylight will be saved. Farmers and fisherpeople will continue to live by the sun and the seasons.

    However millions of people who have to go to school or jobs will be horribly inconvenienced by those who manipulate our clocks.

  • As attributed to a wise Native American, "You can't make a blanket longer by cutting a foot off the top and sewing it to the bottom."

  • Nobody likes being called childish, however... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RJFerret ( 1279530 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @12:20PM (#55464383)

    When I was a child, I was taught there were right and wrong ways of saying things, so I could communicate with others. That was decades ago.

    Then I learned that language evolves, and what is spoken and permissible nowadays are totally different words and formats than from when I was a child--I've adapted so I can communicate with others.

    That's what grown adults do, relate to those around them and their community, not try to enforce specific aberrations of speech or stay stuck in the past. If you can shift your clock forward in the Spring, you can stop calling it Daylight Saving Time and refer to it as everyone else does, Daylight Savings Time, which matches nicely with other "savings"; and fits with the plural aspect of it, as there are lots of different Daylight Savings times in various places with different starts and endings.

  • Let's just call it "Just get up an hour earlier, you lazy bastard, if you want more daylight" time.

  • And we literally completely lost "literally" as well.

    Maybe it's time for some new leadership in the Grammar Nazi camp?

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