Till or ’til?
Posted by: Ivy Wigmore
Which is correct?
Because time is limited, please hold your questions ____ after the robot demonstration.
a. till
b. ’til
Answer: a
Explanation:
Although till is often considered to be an abbreviation of until — and is frequently thought to be incorrect for its extra letter l and lack of apostrophe — it actually predates the longer word. People who want to use a less formal variant sometimes use ’til, but that’s not actually a word. Because we’ve got two perfectly good, equally correct words that mean the same thing, we don’t need to incorporate another into the language. (Merriam-Webster, I’m talking to you!)
See more about ’til, till and until on World Wide Words and motivated grammar.
Thanks to @divinewrite for the idea for this post. (He, in turn, thanks @code_and_prose for setting him up with a question.)
Follow us on Twitter @tao_of_grammar




