Intercalary day is coming up


Every four years, we add a day to our shortest month to make up for the fact that it really takes Earth a little more than 365 days to orbit the sun.

The year is, of course, called leap year, with February 29 being leap day. But what, exactly, is leaping?

It would be more accurate to call February 29 “intercalary day,” but that doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

The name is likely inspired by the effect of leap day on the months that follow: It means that dates on the calendar leap ahead two days of the week instead of one. So if your birthday is March 1 or later and was on a Friday last year, it will be on a Sunday instead of a Saturday this year.

Maybe it should be called “skip day” instead? 🤔

Whether or not the names “leap day” and “leap year” resonate with you, they shouldn't be capitalized.

What are you doing with your extra day this year? Hit reply and let us know.

❤ Team Stylebot

Get a tip, give a tip

If Stylebot's newsletter has made a difference in your work, or you just love it, show your appreciation with a tip.


💌 A tip a week

If someone forwarded you this email, subscribe here to get one writing tip a week in your inbox.

💬 Get reliable, ethical writing advice at your fingertips

Improving your writing means making better choices every day. Stylebot makes it easy with our Slack, Teams and Google Chrome extensions. Try Stylebot for free today.

📝 About Stylebot

Stylebot helps media professionals save time without sacrificing quality by answering editing questions on Slack, Microsoft Teams and Google Chrome. We're on a mission to make editing faster, easier and more fun ✨ Learn more about Stylebot or follow us Instagram, X or LinkedIn.

Stylebot

Hone your writing skills and never use "hone in" again. Get writing tips, have fun with words and learn something new in a one-minute read each week by signing up for Stylebot’s newsletter.

Read more from Stylebot

We don't often think of chairs as being deep. But roots? Absolutely. And therein lies the confusion between "deep-seated" and "deep-seeded." But most of you weren't fooled by last week's quiz — almost 60% of you knew the phrase is "deep-seated." So how did "deep-seeded" get planted (😉) in our minds? Well, for starters, the two phrases sound alike. Plus, "seeded" makes sense in this context. It's a classic eggcorn, a misheard phrase that sometimes makes logical sense. Some other eggcorn...

We had a tie in last week's quiz about how to punctuate the term commonly used for carved pumpkins, with 35% of you choosing "jack o'lanterns" and another 35% choosing "jack-o'-lanterns." So who's right? Let's ask Stylebot 😉 It's tedious, but we put the hyphens and an apostrophe in jack-o'-lantern. Another common format is "jack-o-lantern." "Jack o'lantern" is much less common. So who is Jack? And what's he doing with a lantern? Here's where we tell you what carved pumpkins and marsh gas have...

If you chose "pouring over" in last week's quiz, did you associate the act of studying intently with poor posture? Perhaps pore and pour's fellow homophone can help you remember the correct phrase. Almost everyone who took last week's quiz correctly identified "pour" as the verb to use for serving drinks. But nearly a third of you chose "pouring over" for the act of studying the audit logs, when the correct phrase is poring over. When you hear the phrase "poring over," you might picture...