Expression: Up until now

[Tamara]

Hi

I am getting entangled again

Up until now – the expression that I hear and read quite often.
But it's not a 'dictionary' phrase like 'so far', 'by now', 'as yet', 'till now', etc.,
or just 'up to now'

1. What additional meaning up adds to until now? Could you give some comments about it?

2. Moreover, I can see that there is some 'grammatical tradition' to use different (synonymous) expressions depending on positivity of the statement itself.

[Alan]

Morning Tamara,

I hope you'll forgive me being flippant but your typo has created an interesting new expression: amyway (anyway) suggesting the way in which Amy explains something. I like it!

But to your point. The expressions: till/until now and up till/up until now both suggest the idea of from the start/beginning to the present time. The addition of 'up' simply indicates that whatever follows has obtained/existed right to the present moment. If you imagine a line marking the junction to a main road, you drive up to that white line and stop. If you imagine a deadline by which an application must be sent and you leave sending that application to the last moment, you are waiting up till the last posting time before you put the letter in the postbox.

Both constructions can be positive or negative:

Up until now you have been able to buy this online.

Up until now you have been unable to buy this online.

As for an alternative, I could suggest: To date -

Alan
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English as a Second Language
You can read my ESL story Communicating with you?

[Tamara]

Morning Alan,

Thanks a lot.
Aha, that’s not a fixed phrase and up is just 'up'. Good to hear.

Ala… er... um... Anyway, I have a problem to use up in a situation like you gave ('up to that white line') – when the road with thaaat white line goes down (when we, in fact, have two 'dimensions', direction of movement and the real slope of the road).

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It’s impossible to learn swimming without entering the water…

[Tom]

[Alan]

Hi Tom,

No, the following doesn't work, I'm afraid:

The water came up till his neck.

We have to use till and until with time expressions.

Alan
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English as a Foreign Language
You can read my EFL story Sea Expressions

[Tom]

Thank you, Alan.

Last question.

Are both of the following sentences same?

1- Up till now he had been in charge here.
2- Until now he had been in charge here.

Tom

[Yankee]

.
Yes, they're the same, Tom.

You could also say:
3- Till now he had been in charge here.

Amy
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Amy
.
ESL teacher, translator, and a native speaker of American English

[Yankee]

Hi Tom

Your use of past perfect in the last two sentences is interesting (and correct).

I'm running out of time right now, but I'll write more later.

Amy
_________________
Amy
.
ESL teacher, translator, and a native speaker of American English

[Tom]

I would end my questions here with a request for a few examples of up till from you!

Do yu find the following OK?

1- Up till 2004, we lived happily.
2- She was not married up till this Monday.
3- She irritated him up till he was furious. (To me, until sounds better here)
4- They lived together up till his death.
5- Up till then, I had never tasted a burger.

Tom

[Yankee]

Hi Tom

Here are a few comments about your sentences (in blue):

1- Up till 2004, we lived happily. OK

2- She was not married up till this Monday. Why did you use this and not last?

3- She irritated him up till he was furious. (To me, until sounds better here)
Until (or just 'till') sounds better to me, too.

4- They lived together up till his death. OK

5- Up till then, I had never tasted a burger. OK

Here are a few more sentences. I avoided using "up till now" even though that is probably the most common collocation.

- She studied up till dawn, then fell asleep and slept through the test.
- My normal weight was 110 pounds up till 5 years ago, but since then I've had trouble keeping my weight under 125.
- This PC is much better than the one I'd been using up till last June.

Amy
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Amy
.
ESL teacher, translator, and a native speaker of American English