It’s the most capitalised time of the year, with plenty of Eves and Days and News to contend with, and as you browse the internet and the shop fronts, you’ll no doubt see plenty of interpretations of how to spell them all. To be fair, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day tend to be capitalised properly, but it’s New Year’s Day that causes confusion, probably with good reason. Do all three words start with a capital letter? Are any words capitalised? And that about that apostrophe? Here’s your guide.

When you look at January 1st in your diary, you’ll see it is listed as “New Year’s Day”. It’s a specific day of the year, just like Remembrance Sunday or Saint Valentine’s Day. So whenever it is referred to instead of January 1st, it should take capital initials.

The same applies to New Year’s Eve, when used instead of December 31st. All three words start with a capital.

It all gets a complicated when you’re referring to the days and weeks after December 31st, or the new year. You might be building a house extension in the new year, for example, or travelling to see a friend on January 3rd. It’s a new year, but not New Year’s Day. Indeed, the event might take more than a day to complete. Either way, you can use the more generic “in the new year” to describe it. Note that even if something is happening on New Year’s Day, you can still write that it’s happening in the new year – both can be true at the same time. You just shouldn’t spell it new year’s day, as that would break the convention.

What about the apostrophe?

There also has to be an apostrophe in “Year’s”, as it’s a possessive form. It’s the day belonging to the new year, to put it crudely. You’ll often hear “New Year’s Eve” shortened to “New Year’s”, as in “Where are you going for New Year’s?” It has become pretty standard usage nowadays, but should still take the apostrophe as it’s referring to the same day, and not a plural. New Year’s Day isn’t often shortened like this, but if it ever is, the same rule applies. It’s a similar concept to the way we say “a seven-year-old” when we’re referring to “a seven-year-old child”. The hyphens are a fossil from the full adjectival form. They remain even though you’re technically just writing an adjective, which has mutated into a noun.

That’s not to say there are never occasions when “new years” can be used. If you’re describing things that happen every year around January, it’s legitimate to pluralise “year”. For example, you can write “new years mean new calendars” as it’s a recurring thing that happens every year.