till or 'til

[feistycurves]

I started a cross stitch project yesterday and it has a quote on it.

"Sleep till you're hungry, eat till your sleepy."

Is it just me, or should that be 'til? I'm sure the long version is "sleep until you're hungry", and because you're removing letters shouldn't it be 'til?

[Lakitu]

It's 'til

A till is a cash register, the ' before a word is indicative of the dropped letter(s)

[feistycurves]

yeah that's what i thought

[roxygirl66]

Till is correct. It is a preposition of until, not an abbreviation.

[Lakitu]

http://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2007/11/ 23/til-v-till-v-til-v-until/

Here you go, we're all correct LOL

[Ametrine]

TILL is not correct. It should be 'til. The apostrophe shows that there are missing letters from the word UNTIL.

[ladyalex]

The Compact OED gives TILL as a preposition, says that it has its roots in Old English and is definitely not a shortened form of UNTIL.

[Lakitu]

Yep, one of the sites I looked at after roxygirl's post said that 'till' was the only usedand the word 'until' wasn't introduced 'til (ha) the last Century.

[feistycurves]

Lol. Seems to be a bit of debate. It's possible that both version are correct, but I'm the sort of person who gets driven crazy by mistakes like that. If I stitch the quote the way it is and then put it on my wall, I might as well call the men in white coats now. I'm changing it. Thanks for your input everyone.

[Quizmonster]

�Till', in the sense of �up to a certain point in time' is actually older than �until', both having been around for the past 700 years or so. Shakespeare used it: "Fight till the last gasp" (Henry VI) and Sir Walter Scott used it: "She doubted if the woman would last till morning" (St Ronan's). �Till' is certainly not an abbreviated form of �until'.
Today, �until' may be thought of as marginally more formal than �till' and is certainly more commonly used in writing. However, �till' is probably just as common in speech. It is, therefore, just nonsense to claim - as some do - that �till' is somehow wrong.
The actual abbreviation �til is just a 20th century affectation and of no real significance.

[Trillipse]

and watch out for the "your" and "you're"

[feistycurves]

Oh the shame!! I have a reputation among my friends for being slightly anal about spelling and grammar and things. I can't believe I screwed up and wrote 'your'. It's a good job none of my friends use AB. I'd never live it down.

[Trillipse]

i do the same thing myself - often comes from fervent stumbling or heated answering, whatever your most prone to...

ps. is feisty curves particularly descriptive? does sound fun...

[hippyhoppy]

Personally, I would favor 'til, however, I've consulted the dictionary and it approves of till quoting 'a variant of until'.. we live and learn.. hey ho

[Trillipse]

as with hippyhoppy, i favour 'til.

i blame that on conservativism of language, anality, awkwardness, obsessive-compulsive tendencies, and englishness.

perhaps not in that order.

i still want to know about the curves..

[yogasun]

feistycurves, I too am anal about spelling and grammar.
Recently a poster was printed advertising our am. dram.
play and they had printed :-

'Caberet style seating'

I refused to put any around the town 'til (!!) the e was changed (manually) to an a.
They said it didn't matter - it did to me!

[Quizmonster]

Ah, but Yogasun, perhaps they meant a pine-branch, as used for practice by young lads in the Highlands before they graduate to the full-size caber for tossing in the Highland Games!

[feistycurves]

Trillipse, yes "feisty curves" is descriptive. :P

And I love the fact that when you were telling me that you make the same mistake, you made the mistake. Hehe.

"whatever your most prone to... "

Yogasun, the same thing happens to me regularly. I recently did a group project at uni and one of my partners was dyslexic. When he handed me his piece, it was all I could do to not pull out a pen there and then and start correcting it. It bugged me for weeks, and in the end I photocopied it and corrected it in secret.

[warpig3]

LOL feistycurves, did you correct it just for yourself?

[feistycurves]

Yeah. I handed in his original, but corrected the photocopy because it was driving me crazy.

[warpig3]

Brilliant! That did make me laugh.