About howmanytill

What the site does

howmanytill answers time questions. How many days until Christmas, how many Fridays are left before Thanksgiving, how long until 5 PM, how long ago was 2005.

Each question has its own page with a clear number at the top and the working underneath. You can read the answer in a second, or scroll for weeks, work days, hours and the dates behind the count.

The site is written for people in the US, the UK, Canada and Australia. Dates, holidays and spelling follow those countries.

Why we built it

Most countdown pages show a number and little else. They hide how it was counted, they ignore your time zone, or they bury the answer under adverts.

We wanted pages that state the rule they use, show the dates they counted and stay correct for the person reading. That means the same page can tell a visitor in Sydney and a visitor in Denver a different, and correct, number.

The result is a site where every figure can be checked against a calendar.

How the pages are made

The site is built from a single set of counting rules and a table of events. A page is not written by hand for each date. The same code builds the number, the weekdays, the tables and the text around them.

Prose is written by us for each kind of page, and reviewed against the same checks as the numbers. We set a minimum length, a limit on sentence length, and a ban on filler phrases.

Pages are rebuilt every night, and your browser recounts when you open one. So the figure you see is the figure for today, in your own time zone.

Where the dates come from

Fixed holidays use their calendar date. Moving holidays follow the rule that defines them, such as the fourth Thursday of November for US Thanksgiving.

Easter follows the Western church calendar. Lunar holidays, such as Diwali and Eid al-Fitr, come from published date tables, and the equinoxes and solstices come from astronomical data.

Each event page names its source. Public holidays come from the US Office of Personnel Management, GOV.UK and the governments of Canada and Australia.

How the site is paid for

The site is free to use. It is paid for by advertising, which we plan to show through Google AdSense once the site has been approved.

Adverts sit in fixed places and never between the inputs and the answer of a calculator. We do not sell your data, and there are no accounts.

If we add new ways to pay, such as a paid widget, we will say so here.

Who runs it

howmanytill is an independent project run by one person. It is not part of a larger media company or a network of near-identical sites.

Because it is small, mistakes can be fixed quickly. If you find a wrong date or an unclear answer, write to us on the contact page and we will look at it.

What we promise

We promise to state how every number is counted, to correct errors when we find them, and to keep the pages fast and readable.

We also promise not to hide the answer. The number is at the top of the page, and the explanation follows it.

Who the site is for

The site is for anyone who needs a date answer fast. That might be a parent counting sleeps to a holiday, a manager planning a launch, or a student watching a deadline.

It is also for people who plan ahead. Weekend counts, work day counts and week counts help with rotas, trips and savings goals.

We write for readers in four countries, so each page names the holidays that apply in each one.

What we do not do

We do not run accounts, forums or comment threads. We do not sell sponsored posts, and we do not publish pages that only exist to attract searches.

If a page does not answer a real question, we would rather leave it out. A smaller site that is right is better than a larger one that is not.

We also avoid pop-ups that cover the answer, and we keep adverts away from the number at the top of the page.

How the site is checked

Every build runs automated tests on the counting rules. The tests cover leap years, month ends, clock changes and the dates of each holiday for many years ahead.

Pages are also checked for length, clarity and links. A page that fails a check does not go live until it is fixed.

This is how a very small team can keep a large set of pages reliable.