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.
It’s falltime
After last weekend’s fall equinox, summertime is officially over, which means it must be falltime.
Or should it be “autumntime”? Or both? Or neither?
As we’ve discussed before, sometimes there isn’t a lot of rhyme or reason to the English language. Such is the case with the words for our seasons. For example, why do springtime, summertime and wintertime flow easily off our tongues, while it’s rare to hear an utterance of falltime?
And why is fall the only season with two names? It might be because it’s the newest seasonal label, and its naming coincided with Americans’ efforts to distinguish their language from British English.
The words “summer” and “winter” have been around for longer than “spring” and “fall.” Before English speakers conceived of four seasons, they described just two: the warmest and coldest. The in-between seasons, so to speak, did not have their own names, or at least not ones that everyone agreed upon.
Until the 16th century, if spring and fall were described at all, they went by different names. “Spring” was used in addition to “vere,” “lenten” and “primetemps,” while what we now know as fall was simply “harvest.”
It seems that the other words that sprung up for “spring” had fallen away by the time “fall” and “autumn” came around. So English speakers had agreed upon “spring” but were still in their vere/lenten/primetemps era for its cooler counterpart. That is, they were using both “autumn” and “fall” to describe the season.
And as American colonists worked to distinguish their version of English from British English, they opted for “fall” while Brits stuck with “autumn.”
Maybe we can all agree on “pumpkin spice season”? 🍂
We're thrilled to be back in your inbox after a two-week break. If you downloaded our free guide on ethical and inclusive language, we'd love to know what you think. And if you missed us, let us know by filling out this quick survey.
❤ Team Stylebot
💌 A tip a week
If someone forwarded you this email, subscribe here to get one writing tip a week in your inbox.
💬 Need more tips?
Want to get writing tips like these on demand? Try Stylebot for free.
📝 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 on Twitter and Instagram.
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.
Every one of our newsletters is designed to give you a writing tip you can use in your everyday life. See what we did there? If you remember last week's quiz, you might already know whether or not you got the right answer. If you need a refresher, we quizzed you on the use of "every one/everyone" and "every day/everyday." And most of you got it right! You needed the two-word versions of each term to correctly complete the sentence: "Every one of them noticed the mural as they walked past it...
It's hard to miss a mural that spans an entire block. It's much easier to overlook missing commas. One word would have changed the answer to last week's quiz, which most of you got right: Here's the correct sentence: "The mural, which spans the entire block, is being restored." However, if you change "which" to "that," the correct answer is none. Why? Which introduces nonessential clauses — that is, clauses that don't change the main point of the sentence. That introduces essential clauses,...
There wasn't a full moon on Halloween, but you might have glimpsed one earlier this week. Either way, you don't capitalize "moon," or "sun," for that matter. That was the first of the errors in last week's quiz. Here's the sentence again: "The full Moon was the perfect compliment to their night of trick or treating." So how many did you spot? For most of you, it was three, the same number we counted. The other two were "compliment," which should be complement, and "trick or treating," which...