DAYLIGHT
SAVING TIME
When we
change our clocks
Daylight Saving Time begins for most of
the United States at 2 a.m. on the first Sunday of April. This has been
recently changed in some states but not everywhere. Time reverts to standard
time at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday of October. In the U.S., each time zone
switches at a different time.
In the European Union, Summer Time begins
and ends at 1 a.m. Universal Time (Greenwich Mean Time). It starts the
last Sunday in March, and ends the last Sunday in October. In the EU, all
time zones change at the same moment.
Spring forward, Fall back
During DST, clocks are turned forward an
hour, effectively moving an hour of daylight from the morning to the evening.
Spelling
& grammar
The official spelling is Daylight Saving
Time, not Daylight Savings Time.
Saving is used here as a verbal adjective
(a participle). It modifies time and tells us more about its nature; namely,
that it is characterized by the activity of saving daylight. It is a saving
daylight kind of time. Similar examples would be dog walking time or book
reading time. Since saving is a verb describing a single type of activity,
the form is singular.
Nevertheless, many people feel the word
savings (with an 's') flows more mellifluously off the tongue, and Daylight
Savings Time is also in common usage, and can be found in dictionaries.
Part of the confusion is because the phrase Daylight Saving Time is inaccurate,
since no daylight is actually saved. Daylight Shifting Time would be better,
but it is not as politically desirable.
When in
the morning?
In the U.S., clocks change at 2 am local
time. In Spring, clocks spring forward from 1:59 am to 3 am; in Fall, clocks
fall back from 1:59 am to 1 am. In the EU, clocks change at 1 am Universal
Time. In Spring, clocks spring forward from 12:59 am to 2 am; in Fall,
clocks fall back from 1:59 am to 1 am.
Nationwide, U.S.
restaurants and bars have varied closing policies. In many states, liquor
cannot be served after 2 a.m. But at 2 a.m. in the Fall, the time switches
back one hour. So, can they serve for that additional hour in October?
The official answer is that the bars do not close at 2 a.m. but actually
at 1:59 a.m. So, they are already closed when the time changes from Daylight
Saving Time into Standard Time. In practice however, many establishments
stay open an extra hour in the Fall.
In the U.S., the
changeover time was chosen to be 2 am, when most people are at home and,
originally, the time when the fewest trains were running. This is practical
and minimizes disruption. It is late enough to minimally affect bars and
restaurants, and prevent the day from switching to yesterday (which would
be confusing). It is early enough that the entire continental U.S. has
switched by daybreak, and the changeover occurs before most early shift
workers and early churchgoers (particularly on Easter).
Some U.S.
areas
Daylight Saving Time,
for the U.S. and its territories, is NOT observed in Hawaii, American Samoa,
Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, most of the Eastern Time Zone portion
of the State of Indiana, and the state of Arizona (not the Navajo Indian
Reservation, which does observe). Navajo Nation participates in the Daylight
Saving Time policy, due to its large size and location in three states.
A safety reminder.
Many fire departments
encourage people to change the battery in the smoke detector when they
change their clocks, because it can be so easy to forget otherwise. "A
working smoke detector more than doubles a person's chances of surviving
a home fire," says William McNabb of the Troy Fire Department in Michigan.
More than 90 percent of homes in the United States have smoke detectors,
but one-third are estimated to have worn-out or missing batteries.
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