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'Daylight Savings' Is Grammatically Incorrect (qz.com)
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."
Whats the deal with "man-holes"?
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.
Because that's TOTALLY why everyone hates it, the incorrect grammar.
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.
Trolling is a art,
What's the grammatically correct emoji to express daylight saving time?
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
It looks like the Aspie pedants have finally taken over the asylum. Tune in next week when it is patiently explained to us how we don't "dial" a phone number any more.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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!
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.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
...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.
-Styopa
There, fixed that for you.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
(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?
#DeleteChrome
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?
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.
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. :)
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!"
At least we won't have to relive the "when does the millennium actually begin" drama.
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.