[“Functional furniture.” Photograph by Martha Holmes. December 1947. From the Life Photo Archive.]
Daylight-saving time begins tonight, or tomorrow morning. To my mind, it begins when you turn your clock back. Want to go to bed early? Turn your clock back at night. Want an early start in the morning? Turn your clock back after you wake up. So much for standardization. But be sure to turn just once.
Many people profess to hate daylight-saving time. But I’m confused: if you would prefer an extra hour of daylight on winter afternoons, as I would, what you really want is to be on daylight-saving time all year, no?
[Saving, or savings? Garner’s Modern English Usage: “the plural form is now extremely common in AmE,” but “in print sources, the singular form still appears twice as often as the plural.”]
Saturday, November 4, 2017
DST
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comments: 5
In my hometown, DST means kids go to school in the dark in the winter, which parents felt was dangerous. They do have later evenings, which I really, really, really miss. Here it's dark by 4 p.m. Even for someone who likes winter and doesn't have SAD, that's depressing.
Probably not highly relevant, but in economics, among the people who pay attention to the difference, "saving" is the act of adding to your accumulated savings, and "savings" is the accumulation. In econ, the act of adding is called a "flow", and the accumulation is called a "stock".
You might prefer to call one a verb and the other a noun...
Since time does not accumulate, I might have to go with "daylight saving time".
Happy DST!
ps, I hate the change. Twice a year.
Oh, it’s relevant: Garner doesn’t mention economics, but he points out that “when saving is used, readers might puzzle momentarily over whether saving is a gerund (the saving of daylight) or a participle (the time for saving).” Savings removes any ambiguity.
I remember thinking "I'll never need this stuff" when my teacher moved on from verbs and nouns to other word types. I never regretted that decision until I started hanging out here. Forgive me Father for I have sinned...
You’re absolved, totally. :)
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