ToTN

[Beverly Flanigan]

I know I've mentioned this before, but a book editor once wanted to change
my dialect example "quarter till" (South Midland, also South?) to either
"quarter to" or "quarter 'til."  I had to vehemently protest and tell her
to go look at a dictionary.  I won, of course.

At 04:03 PM 6/29/2006, you wrote:
>Prolly a useless comment, given that it's more like whining about a
>pet peeve than like anything else, but I've *always* known that both
>TILL and UNTIL are good English words as long as I've been relatively
>fluent in the English language, ca.sixty years. It's passing strange
>is that people born in the '50's-'80's, seemimgly out of nowhere, have
>decided that there's something wrong with the spelling or the use of
>TILL without so much as cracking a dictionary or a grammar. As for
>people who can't handle what may be termed "slang spelliings" or even
>"joke spellings" like "nite" and "thru," let them go back to arguing
>that "ain't" ain't a word.
>
>-Wilson
>
>On 6/28/06, Grant Barrett <gbarrett at worldnewyork.org> wrote:
>>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>Poster:       Grant Barrett <gbarrett at WORLDNEWYORK.ORG>
>>Subject:      Re: ToTN
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>I've responded back channel to Geoff, but he's misconstrued a couple
>>of things that happened on the show.
>>
>>I think Geoff misunderstood what I was going to say about "till." I
>>was going to say what he said, only without the details: that "till"
>>is a perfectly okay form. But he did it better than I could and the
>>show was better for it.
>>
>>"Keep up the fight" means "keep caring enough about language to get
>>into arguments over it" not "keep fighting to preserve language the
>>way it is."
>>
>>Grant Barrett
>>Double-Tongued Word Wrester
>>http://www.doubletongued.org/
>>
>>The Official Dictionary of Unofficial English (May 2006, McGraw-Hill)
>>http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071458042/
>>
>>
>>On Jun 28, 2006, at 18:33, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>>
>> > today's Talk of the Nation, on words and the web, with grant barrett,
>> > geoff pullum,  and martha barnette:
>> >
>> >   http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5518444
>> >
>> > and geoff's reactions:
>> >
>> >   http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003299.html
>> >
>> > ------------------------------------------------------------
>> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>>------------------------------------------------------------
>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
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>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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