"Since", "until", "from", "to" on invoices or date ranges of a form
Which is the correct form on an invoice, or a general date range in a form, and why?
Monkey dolls 12 GBP
From 2012-01-03 to 2013-01-02
Monkey dolls 12 GBP
Since 2012-01-03 until 2013-01-02
Form format (dates can be modified with a datepicker):
Since: 2012-01-03
until: 2013-01-02
Since
+until
makes sense and sounds ok to me, yet I know I can be very wrong, at least when it comes to the common usage in the UK and/or US, since English is not my first language.
I am interested in both British and American English.
Until now I've been using since
+until
, yet some articles explicitly say they may not ever be used together, while some people and some other articles get deep into grammar rules which I can't really apply on the context of invoices and forms.
Here's a recent article saying since
and until
can never be used together (last paragraph): http://englishmatsuri.wordpress.com/2013/03/04/for-since-until-from-and-to/
Edit: The date range can start in the past or in the future, and can end in the past or in the future. However, at the time of issuing an invoice or rendering a form, you cannot know when the document will be read or how the form will be filled.
The US Treasury Department invoicing guidelines use "Service date from" and "Service date to."
Look at the definitions of "since" and "until":
Since - from a definite past time until now
Until - before
Since the definition of "since" implicitly includes a sub-clause of "until", it doesn't make sense to combine it with a separate "until". So what you have is:
Dolls sold since January 2012 -- Valid
Dolls sold from January 2012 to February 2012 -- Valid
Dolls sold since January 2012 until February 2012 -- Incorrect
The combination of "from" and "until" is also valid in some circumstances, like:
He stayed from dusk until dawn.
But for some reason using it in a date range does not sound right to my ears. It may be idiomatic rather than any grammatical reason. I'm not really sure though. Perhaps someone else can comment.
It has to be from...to.
Used as a preposition, "since" indicates that an action/event that started some time in the past is continuing until now. Given that you have to indicate, on your invoice, that a certain thing started on a certain date and ended on a certain date (and therefore is no longer continuing), using "since" would be incorrect.