Is the use of 'till' and 'through' equivalent in this situation?

Question

Suppose one would say:

chapters 1 through 4

That would be equivalent to:

chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4

Could that statement be rephrased as:

chapters 1 till 4

Is that a correct statement, and if so, can one always replace through with till to mean 'to and including'?

"Till" is ambiguous -- it's unclear whether you mean to include chapter 4 or stop at 3. "Through" makes it clear that you mean to include chapter 4. Furthermore, "till" (in this sense) is a hair archaic. — Hot Licks, Commented Mar 13, 2018 at 0:14
I've searched "sections 1 till" on Google, and the tiny number of relevant hits suggests that (a) this is a non-standard usage that is (b) largely confined to non-native speakers. Perhaps they are confusing a non-temporal interval (1 through/to 5) with a temporal one (1 till 5). — Edwin Ashworth, Commented Mar 13, 2018 at 0:15
@EdwinAshworth that was my guess too, most of those results seem to be written by Dutch people. Knowing Dutch myself, I know that in Dutch there is one word for 'up to and including', 'through', and 'till' (in a sense of: until a certain time). So that explains the small number of results. Thanks for clarifying. — JJJ, Commented Mar 13, 2018 at 0:20
I'm with @EdwinAshworth on this one. It's worth stressing that "temporal" subsumes uses like "until you get to", but for the question in hand, it's not really appropriate. I'd just write Chapters 1–4 and be done with it ... — Will Crawford, Commented Mar 13, 2018 at 0:37

Kris · Accepted Answer · 2018-03-13 06:43:21Z

1

chapters 1 through 4

(should be your best bet)

chapters 1, 2, 3 and 4

(No need for comma after "3")

chapters 1 to 4

("to," not "till" - "to" works fine, although technically "to" is supposed to be ambiguous about whether it includes "4" or not).

Till is used only in reference to time -- "I waited till 5 pm" may be acceptable.

answered Mar 13, 2018 at 6:37

Kris

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