Burning Daylight
Mar. 9th, 2009 03:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodyrosemccoyI had this argument in a high school English class, you see. Or, rather, I heard it. I walked in on a group of people arguing about “Daylight Saving(')s Time” and whether it was “savings,” like the savings in the bank, I guess, or “saving’s,” as though “daylight saving” was a single noun phrase and this was its time to begin. One girl was eloquently arguing for the latter, with another girl piping slightly more tentative backup; the rest were arguing against.
Me? I was the pedantic nerd who pointed out that neither is correct, and that the official term is “Daylight Saving Time.” You could argue for a hyphen in there: “Daylight-Saving Time,” but either way, it makes grammatical sense. Even “Daylight Savings Time” never made much sense to me.
But it got me wondering about the perception of the s. I figure it’s in there for pronunciation purposes, because it’s a lot harder to say the phrase without it. But since it’s become so colloquial that we all know it, and I wondered how it was parsed in people’s heads.
As for me, given that it’s colloquial anyway, I have decided to parse it in the most modern sense of the term. Ladies and gentlemen, when I curse this pointless clock-switching, I shake my fist at my alarm and bellow, “Damn you, Daylight Savingz Tiem!”
Hey, it makes just as much sense.
And anyway, I'm nocturnal, so the question of daylight saving is sort of a moot one anyway.
Me? I was the pedantic nerd who pointed out that neither is correct, and that the official term is “Daylight Saving Time.” You could argue for a hyphen in there: “Daylight-Saving Time,” but either way, it makes grammatical sense. Even “Daylight Savings Time” never made much sense to me.
But it got me wondering about the perception of the s. I figure it’s in there for pronunciation purposes, because it’s a lot harder to say the phrase without it. But since it’s become so colloquial that we all know it, and I wondered how it was parsed in people’s heads.
As for me, given that it’s colloquial anyway, I have decided to parse it in the most modern sense of the term. Ladies and gentlemen, when I curse this pointless clock-switching, I shake my fist at my alarm and bellow, “Damn you, Daylight Savingz Tiem!”
Hey, it makes just as much sense.
And anyway, I'm nocturnal, so the question of daylight saving is sort of a moot one anyway.
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no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 10:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 11:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-10 12:01 am (UTC)It's a pet peeve of mine.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-10 02:10 am (UTC)*checks Wikipedia*
Whoa.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-10 02:48 am (UTC)Hmm...
Date: 2009-03-10 05:51 pm (UTC)Re: Hmm...
Date: 2009-03-10 07:47 pm (UTC)*shades eyes and looks into the distance* Who was that masked nitpicker, anyway?