Did you remember to set your clocks back one hour this past weekend? If you didn’t, you were probably late for work on Monday (assuming you have some kind of regular work schedule). Yes, twice a year, we have to adjust our clocks either forward or back for what is known as Daylight Savings Time. Or is it Daylight Saving Time. Or maybe it’s Daylight Saving’s Time?
The suggestion for today’s grammar post comes by way of frequent Beyond the Rhetoric visitor Ray Ebersole. He’s noticed that people seem to spell it a million different ways, so what is the right way to refer to our changing of the clocks? It may not be observed everywhere around the world (and not even in every American state either, from what I recall), but it is observed by many places.
In an absolutely official sense, we are supposed to call it Daylight Saving Time (DST). The word “saving” in the term is acting as part of an adjective rather than as a verb. We are referring to this period as a time during which there is daylight saving. This is similar to when you say Craig is an easygoing person. He is a person who is easygoing.
However, many media outlets, reporters, and other “official” sources refer to it as Daylight Savings Time or Daylight-Savings Time (with a hyphen). This is because it is implied that we are “saving” time, metaphorically storing it away in a “daylight” bank. That’s why Daylight Saving(s) Time starts in the spring (“spring ahead”) and ends in the fall (“fall behind”). The daylight we “save” during the summer is then “withdrawn” in the winter, so to speak.
While it is not technically correct to say Daylight Savings Time, it’s not really something that is an issue with me. I still cringe when people say that they could care less or when someone talks about something happening ever so often (when they really mean to say “every so often”), but Daylight Savings Time doesn’t really bother me.
You know, aside from the somewhat dated practice itself. It just seems like a largely unnecessary hassle in the modern age, but I’ll leave that debate for another day and another time. And for the record, Daylight Saving’s Time (with the apostrophe) is never correct.
Thanks Michael. I actually saw it written 3 different ways when I did a Google search which was peaked by someone actually complaining about a blog misspelling it in the title of the post.
My thought and response to them was “Why are you commenting on the grammar of the post instead of the content?” I then continued on with my comment on the content of the post.
I believe that Daylight Saving Time doesn’t sound correct, but that is just a tone thing, not a proper grammar thing. That is why I suggested it as a post for here. If people who feed us the news are not spelling it correctly, how can we expect anyone else to do it correctly. We use news sites and other types of media to teach our children, so if the proof readers can’t get it right, then how can we expect the kids.
I know mistakes happen, but it should not happen as frequently as it does in the media and with something that is talked about so much as DST is.
I’ll admit that I tend to say Daylight Savings Time (with the ‘s’) too, but I think it’s largely because that’s how I hear it in mass media and casual conversation. It doesn’t make it right, but it makes it more accepted, I suppose.
I have to admit that I didn’t know it was ‘saving’. It does sound better with the ‘s’ and incorrect without it.
I don’t think English teachers would mark it wrong.
Being right isn’t what gets the attention in today’s world. Take EVOO, which made the dictionary a few years ago because Rachael Ray made it famous. A lot of other words or phrases have become the common place even though they are not grammatically correct.
It’s the content that makes me read something even if the grammar isn’t exactly correct, John Chow is the perfect example. On the other hand if the grammar is consistently poor throughout the text I will stop reading because it takes away from the content itself.