Let's stop counting centuries

One-indexing problems in everyday life

Here’s a sentence from Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now:

The Enlightenment is conventionally placed in the last two-thirds of the 18th century, though it flowed out of the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Reason in the 17th century and spilled into the heyday of classical liberalism in the first half of the 19th.

Let’s try an experiment. I’m going to give you a question, which you should try to answer as quickly as you can. Ready? OK: Did the American revolution happen before, during, or after the Enlightenment?

Happy 4th of July BTW

Now, suppose the above sentence had been written like this:

The Enlightenment is conventionally placed in the last two-thirds of the 1700s, though it flowed out of the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Reason in the 1600s and spilled into the heyday of classical liberalism in the first half of the 1800s.

The prudence of copy-editing the guy who wrote your favorite book on writing is debatable. But still—if you’re like me, you’ll find the question much easier to answer given the second version of the sentence, because you remember the American revolution as starting in 1776, not in the 76th year of the 18th century.

The issue, of course, is that “counted centuries” are off by one from how we normally interact with dates—the 13th century starts in AD 1201.

There’s a simple solution. Avoid saying “the 18th century”, and say “the 1700s” instead. Besides being easier to understand, it’s also slightly shorter.

And—what’s that? Do I see an objection in the back?

They aren’t the same!

Yes, yes, I know. Technically speaking:

They’re different. But if the difference matters and you really want “the 18th century”, then you might want to spell out the dates explicitly. Because are you sure the person you’re talking to knows the above table? And are you sure that they will be sure that you know?

No one gets confused about what “the 1700s” means.

What will the fancy people think?

People count centuries in formal writing, and I don’t suggest you buck this convention too hard. If you’re writing a legal brief for the US Supreme Court, go ahead and count centuries for now.

But take an analogy:

I saw someone in the distance. They seemed to be following me.

In the 1970s, fancy people would have sniffed at using “they” rather than “he” for a single person of unknown sex like this. But today, fancy people would sniff at not doing that. How did that happen?

I think “they” climbed the prestige ladder—people slowly adopted it in gradually more formal and higher-status situations until it was everywhere.

That’s all that’s needed for language to evolve. When people can easily switch, they should go ahead and do it.

Aren’t decades vs centuries ambiguous?

If someone says “the 2000s”, does that mean:

1. The 2000-2009 decade?

2. The 2000-2099 century?

3. (The 2000-2999 millennium?)

I think this is the strongest objection. To deal with it, I suggest a convention that trailing zeros are ranges.

For example:

• 1490s means 1490-1499.

• 1500s means 1500-1599.

This leaves ambiguous how to refer to decades like 1800-1809. For these you should specify the wildcard digits as “the 180*s” manually write out the range. Please do not write “the 181st decade”.

Notes

• People will usually intuit the above convention without it being explained. The exception is if you say something like “the 1790s” (meaning 1790-1799) and “the 1800s” (meaning 1800-1899) in close proximity. If you need to do this, just write out one of the ranges.

• If you want to refer to 2001-2100, it’s probably OK to write “the 21st century”, because people will mentally translate this into “the current century” without doing any math. Disregard if you are 76 or more years in the future.

• There’s no good way to refer to 2000-2009, sorry.