nounssingle-word-requests
People are sometimes said to be a morning person or a night person. I also know that the term for something related to night is "nocturnal".
Is there a specific word for a person who sleeps during the day and is active at night? I’m looking for an elegant word for night owl.
Times:
Dawn refers to the time around the actual solar event that is sunrise.
Morning refers to any time before noon, so 1am is still the morning.
Very early morning is sometimes known as "the small hours" (or any regional variant of those words). The actual time is variable, although you will probably provoke a laugh from working people if you refer to any time after 7am in that way (and probably any time after 6am).
Noon refers to 12pm (exact midday) and the time just around it. 1101 is not noon.
Afternoon refers to the time after Noon and before the Night. "Good afternoon" is only used after noon.
Dusk corresponds to dawn, and refers to the event of the sun setting.
Evening is variable in its usage, and is tied both to work schedules and the solar time. It's pretty much always correct to refer to the part of the day when the light begins to wane as "evening".
Night refers to the time after sunset. Accordingly, it can be both morning and night (this being pretty much the definition of the small hours).
Midnight refers to exactly 0000/2400 hours, and the time just around it. 2301 is not midnight.
"Good night" does not mean "have a good sleep". It is used as a farewell when it is late, whether anyone is planning on going home or not.
Meals:
Lunch is a meal taken between breakfast and the evening meal (howsoever called). It is not tied to any specific time beyond that.
The main evening meal may be called "dinner", "supper", or "tea" depending on regional dialect and class. "Dinner" is probably the most neutral option in most dialects (although in some dialects it means the main meal of the day even if that was lunch, or it may mean something else). If a second evening meal is taken, or a very late evening meal is taken, it might be called supper in distinction to dinner. This is not so common any longer.
"Afternoon tea" is a specific meal. Its defining feature is not really that it is taken in the afternoon, but rather the elements it is composed of: it will be a short snack, usually of tea or coffee and a sweet or savory baked good. "Morning tea" is the corresponding snack in the morning.
We are not "fixing" you, because you are not broken. We are correcting you in so far as we think you are wrong.
I don't believe there's an exact word for "someone who corrects others' spelling errors", but there is one for a person who is meticulous in spelling, generally:
orthographer (lit. "right writer"): One versed in orthography; one who spells words correctly, according to approved usage.
If there is a single word which indicates (as @ermanen puts it) a "spelling Nazi", it will almost certainly be derived from "orthography" or "orthographer"; you might consider deriving one yourself, or popularizing a new sense for an existing word, such as:
"orthographizer", derived from "orthographize" meaning "to write or spell correctly", which (I think) nicely emphasizes the transitive nature of his compulsion (i.e. not only ensuring his spelling is perfect, but yours, too), or
"orthographist", has the advantage of possessing that dogmatic little tail, -ism, but is currently only used to describe a specialist in orthography, or "one who studies orthography". So you can either popularize a new sense for it, or extend it a bit to underscore the adherence to received protocols (an "orthodoxic orthographist"? an "observant othographer"? the possibilities are endless).
EDIT: You might also consider unpopular :)
Best Answer
Your question already contains the best adjective: nocturnal refers to being active at night and sleeping during the day. I don't know about elegant, but this is certainly the most technically-correct word you're going to find. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a noun form, but that can usually be fixed by rearranging your sentences a bit.
I do want to note that in most contexts, I wouldn't interpret either night owl or nocturnal (when applied to people) as explicitly sleeping during the day and working at night. Both words just imply that, left to her own devices, Sally would prefer to go to bed late and get up late, where "late" could have different definitions for different people. If you need to make it clear that someone sleeps during the day, then either you need to say that ("sleeps during the day") or refer to them working the graveyard shift (which admittedly is not the most elegant of phrases).