until, 'til, till - clearing up the confusion

Dear Readers,
  Here is a pop quiz for you.  Fill in the blank:
  1.  I will love you ____ the end of time.
       A.  until
       B.  'til
       C.  till
       D.  all of the above
       E.  answers A and B only

If you chose answer D, give yourself an A+.  Let me explain.

According to the Oxford American Dictionary, until is a preposition and conjunction.  The definition goes like this:  up to (a specified time), up to the time when, wait until evening,
  > use until rather than till, especially when it stands first, as in Until last year, we had never been abroad, and in formal use, as in He lived there until his death.

For answer C above, were you surprised at the inclusion of the spelling of the word till as a synonym of this preposition?  This spelling has actually been in use since at least 1957.  The Random House Dictionary has this entry for till:  1.  till:  preposition, up to the time, until
  2.  verb: to labor, as by plowing   3.  noun:  a drawer or box in which money is kept.

Of course, option B above is the abbreviation or shortened form of until. 
Let's see some examples of each of the three options.

UNTIL
In the novel "Joanna's Husband and David's Wife" by Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey, the heroine, Joanna, is writing about her future husband David.  She writes, "I didn't even want to marry him until he said he wanted out of it."

10 year old Felix Funicello, the narrator of Wally Lamb's "Wishin' and Hopin', a Christmas Story",
is recounting an experience he had. " 'Scuse me, 'scuse me,' I kept saying until I'd squeezed my way up to the front."

On the television show "Major Crimes" episode Before and After, Captain Sharon Raydor says to the wife of a murdered victim:  "You just need to stay strong until we can arrest the man who killed your husband."

'TIL
There is a bus stop billboard that advertises for Monday Night Football on ESPN.  The sign reads:
"It ain't over 'til it's Tuesday."

A television sitcom is entitled  'Til Death, starring Brad Garrett.

In the movie "The Wendell Baker Story", released in 2007, Wendell's voice over says,  "They say you don't know what you have 'til it's gone."  So reads the closed caption.

TILL
In Jane Langton's novel "Murder at Monticello", the character Oliver Pratt says, "Well, I've been working on my talk ...Wait till you hear this."

"The Dogs of Babel" is a novel by Carolyn Parkhurst.  In it, the main character and narrator Paul describes a trip to Mardi Gras in New Orleans that he and his wife had taken:  "Easter was late that year, not till mid-April..."

Rhonda Pollero, author of "Knock 'em Dead", has her heroine, Finley Tanner saying, "Be here at eight.  It's ... five till."

Observed on a sign over a restaurant entrance on Reseda Blvd., "Open Till Midnight".

I believe that this last spelling undoubtedly came from hearing the abbreviated form 'til  and incorrectly writing it as it sounded:  till. 
The point of this posting is to show how misspellings of words often become accepted into our ever evolving English language. 

Until, 'til, till we meet next month - speak Good English!