It's Daylight Saving Time, NOT Daylight Savings Time

By now you’ve hopefully remembered to turn your clocks back one hour with this year’s start of Daylight Saving Time. I researched DST hoping to be able to provide a fun, concise history, but found the practice anything but simple in introduction or perseverance! I did find that the first nationwide adoption (by passing of a law) was in 1918 (during World War I) as ‘An Act to preserve daylight and provide standard time for the United States.’

Interestingly (as I have a love of precise English), the official term is “Daylight Saving Time,” not “Daylight SavingS Time,” as is common parlance. It’s a kind of time that saves daylight, and it would be more accurate (grammatically) to use a dash: “Daylight-Saving Time;” but this just isn’t the practice. And to make it more confusing, no daylight is actually saved—rather it’s shifted. Daylight Shifting Time just doesn’t seem as politically powerful when it comes to energy savings, I guess...