A spelling question...sort of.

[michchick98]

Which is correct?

All Hallows Eve
All Hallow's Eve
All Hallows' Eve

Helping with editing on a story and want to make sure I get it right.

Thanks!

 

[CopyCarver]

Which is correct?

All Hallows Eve
All Hallow's Eve
All Hallows' Eve

Helping with editing on a story and want to make sure I get it right.

Thanks!

Don't sweat it--it would be hard to get it wrong with this one.

All Hallows Eve and All Hallow's Eve are both equally acceptable. All Hallows' Eve is a variant and somewhat unusual, but it isn't grammatically wrong.

Centuries ago, the almost universally-used name was All Hallow Even--but readers would have to be compulsive dictionary readers (or 300 years old) to know that one.

Oddly enough, even the more ubiquitous Halloween can be correctly spelled as Halloween, Hallowe'en, or even Holloween.

It seems those damned ghosts and goblins have been casting spells upon the English language!

 

[_Lynn_]

Wikipedia has it as All Hallows Eve. I didn't find any other reference to it yet, though.

 

[michchick98]

Don't sweat it--it would be hard to get it wrong with this one.

All Hallows Eve and All Hallow's Eve are both equally acceptable. All Hallows' Eve is a variant and somewhat unusual, but it isn't grammatically wrong.

Centuries ago, the almost universally-used name was All Hallow Even--but readers would have to be compulsive dictionary readers (or 300 years old) to know that one.

Oddly enough, even the more ubiquitous Halloween can be correctly spelled as Halloween, Hallowe'en, or even Holloween.

It seems those damned ghosts and goblins have been casting spells upon the English language!

Okay, not sweating it. For the context of the story, I need to use All Hallows Eve instead of Halloween. But when I Googled it, I came up with all three variations and wasn't sure which was correct.

I'll stick with All Hallows Eve.

Thanks.

 

[michchick98]

Wikipedia has it as All Hallows Eve. I didn't find any other reference to it yet, though.

I also saw it as All Hallows' Even on Wikipedia. That's where my confusion started.

 

[snoopercharmbrights]

Oxford English Dictionary has the festival as All Hallows and the day itself as All Hallows' Day which makes sense as Hallows is the plural of Hallow, a noun, long obsolete, meaning a holy person. By implication the previous day is All Hallows' Eve or in mediaeval terms All Hallows' E'en and hence the modern contraction Halloween.

 

[sr71plt]

If you are writing in the States, All Hallows' Eve would be most correct. (You can figure it out from the Webster's listing.)

Do be careful if you are writing in the States and someone answers from the Oxford dictionary. That's for writing in the UK. Webster's is the publisher-preferred dictionary in the States.