I have a confession to make: I didn’t know that it was daylight-saving time rather than Daylight Savings Time (with an s, no hyphen, and caps) until co-blogger Sherry Coven corrected me. She is, of course, right–as she always is–so you might be wondering why I, not she, am writing a blog about daylight-saving time.
The reason is simple: I was looking for any lame excuse to go on a rant about the senselessness of turning the clocks ahead so early in the year, and the rant is dedicated to my friends at AccuWeather.com, who are, quite understandably, not interested in hearing the “incessant whining” that they claim to have heard about the topic last year. This year, they can read it.
First, the grammar part. I used the 1998 edition of the AP Stylebook as the source. It doesn’t give much of an explanation, but the Language Log does, so please follow the link for a more detailed explanation. I’d rather move on to my rant about my 47-hour weekend.
It’s not the shorter weekend that’s my main concern, and it’s not even the idea of daylight-saving time in the first place. It’s great to have that extra hour in the evening during outdoor activity season. Since I’m in Pennsylvania, that means June through October; it certainly doesn’t mean March–unless watching big piles of snow in the parking lot become smaller piles of snow constitutes an outdoor activity. You get the point.
In an effort to be fair, there are some advantages, so let me list a few:
–an extra hour in the evening to walk through the slush and mud before it re-freezes
–an extra hour in the evening to enjoy the biting wind and late-season snow squalls
–an extra hour in the evening to enjoy the special kind of exhaustion that only comes from waking up before the sun rises
–the money saved by using the much cheaper morning rates of electricity
As far as I’m concerned, with advantages like that, we can stay on standard time until five minutes before the fireworks go off.
–Paul
Paul’s book–Literally, the Best Language Book Ever
Everything Language and Grammar 
Keep the rants coming Paul! I agree with ALL of them! Should be first of May ’til the end of October here in Atlanta, NO! First of May ’til end of October….
Actually the politicians are playing us like the proverbal frog in a pan of boiling water: Keep starting DST a few weeks earlier every frw years or so until they can argue not having it at all…..
I detest daylight saving time. We live just 40 miles west of eastern time and still it is dark when we get up. Would hate to have that extra hour of darkness they do in A.M. To me we have plenty of daylight in afternoons during warm months and we are in N.W. Florida at a low latitude.
Love DST. Sure it’s tough waking up for the first couple of days, but whether that happens in March or April really doesn’t matter. Fact is, sunrise is briefly pre-early January levels for a few days, maybe a couple of weeks, but you get to enjoy the evenings! From a solar cycle we are equivalent to late-September/early October with this earlier DST: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analemma
Not everyone hibernates till May; here in the sun-belt, I can drive my convertible with the top down and do yard work in the evenings after work. Yay!
I agree with Paul. DST, this early in the game, is rather pointless. We already live in a sleep-deprived society. DST makes it just that much harder.
I’m so glad to know someone else hates DST! Just as brighter mornings were lifting my spirits, darkness cast its ugly shadow again.