I think, as will all advice on writing, it depends on the audience. "The Eighteenth Century" sounds better than "the 1700s", so pick it if prose style is more important than immediate clarity. If what you are writing would allow a reader to treat it as meaning "a long time ago", rather than needing to know the exact years, then that's workable.
If you're writing for an audience of academic or serious amateur historians who are accustomed to ordinally-numbered centuries, then use them. They are the only group of people that regularly refer to both centuries and decades a long time ago, and using "The Eighteenth Century" allows them to reserve "the 1700s" to mean 1700-1709, so solving the decade naming problem that you mentioned.
There are lots of events that are named using the ordinal-century naming system; the military anarchy in the Roman Empire in 235-285 is usually known as "The Crisis of the Third Century", for example; if that's something you need to refer to on a regular basis, then knowing the century-naming system will help.
If you're writing for a general audience who have little call for thinking of dates before their own lifetimes, then "the 1700s" for the century rather than "The eighteenth century" is the better choice, because many people wrongly think that the eighteenth century is the 1800s and many others have to remember to add or subtract one to work out when is being referred to.
Also I've spent too much time as a history nerd. I actually found both of them equally easy to read -- though I remember the time when I was confused by 1800s vs 19th century, so I approve of the change.
The real issue is that we do not name our centuries like we do with our hurricanes/typhoons. If we had Century Bertha and Century Hugo there would be no confusion. Everyone would know without a doubt that the Revolutionary War for Independence was fought in Century Sophronia.
I remember when I was a kid I had problems with this kind of conversion, but now in many I think it’s the opposite. If you mention for example the “18th century composers”, I’ll immediately think of Bach and Mozart, while “composers of the 1700s” will make me stop and think because it sound a bit weird.
I suppose it’s possible to get used to either convention.
You're right. The people saying "18th century sounds nicer" are right too. So I think Pinker should write "1700s" and Andrew Lloyd Webber is fine with writing "18th century."
"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”."
"181st decade" is correct in that example. It's helpful to observe that the very last year finally matches the name. So, for example, the 19th century is from 1801 to 1900, and the 2nd millennium is from 1001 to 2000.
Similarly, if we really did name each decade, the last year of each decade would match its name as well. So 1801 to 1810 would be the 181st decade.
No problem! I also think it's helpful to note that, at the end of the day, it's just math. It's not some naming convention peculiar to the Gregorian calendar or anything like that.
For example, your fourth decade is your thirties. It's not a naming convention; it's just math.
Agreed! I always have to mentally backtrack to years when someone references "the 18th century," etc.
But your example of the person being followed (they not he) hit on another problematic development in vocabulary evolution: The use of "they" for non-binary identity. I believe that people can be whatever they like, I just wish the terminology could be less ambiguous. Why not have a new pronoun, like what happened with Ms. in the 1970s? These days I imagine a new pronoun for non-binary would be adopted quickly, and would be truly helpful to the very people who need it.
Believe me, we tried this, and a significant portion of people's response was (and still is), "That's dumb and confusing. Why can't you just use normal pronouns like a normal person?"
I agree with you, though. I generally prefer a reasonable set of neopronouns to singular they.
I propose we reintroduce the old English letter þ (thorn) and the singular non-binary propoun "the". For pronunciation the "th" is pronounced as in "they" or "them" and the whole thing rhymes with He and She. The object form would be "thim" and the possessive "this".
There is another advantage to this proposal: the French will be deeply annoyed by their inability to pronounce it. This will be an excellent revenge as it is their fault þ was lost in the first place.
Oh, Dynomight, I'm so, so in love with your idea of using wildcards to express (written) date ranges. 200*s. 20**s. "In the 23rd year of every milennium" = *023. It's perfect!
I absolutely agree with you (dynomight). Whenever I encounter a term like "16th century", I have to do some mental gymnastics to figure out what that means, exactly. And I'm not much of a gymnast. Same thing with military time. I once ran an open-source app that was useful to me but it had the very annoying feature that everything was expressed in military time. Damn near drove me crazy. (Note that I'm really terrible at doing arithmetic in my head).
As someone from Europe, I love what you call military time (also hate that you call it that). We don't do mental arithmetic on the numbers though, we just think in them directly. When your entire society runs on this convention, it's actually very nice (not to mention unambiguous).
Also it's actually shorter, e.g. you'd see opening hours for a cafe as "8-16", or opening hours for a business "9-17", or phone support open between "11-14". Good luck cramming that information in as little space using the PM/AM abomination.
I think, as will all advice on writing, it depends on the audience. "The Eighteenth Century" sounds better than "the 1700s", so pick it if prose style is more important than immediate clarity. If what you are writing would allow a reader to treat it as meaning "a long time ago", rather than needing to know the exact years, then that's workable.
If you're writing for an audience of academic or serious amateur historians who are accustomed to ordinally-numbered centuries, then use them. They are the only group of people that regularly refer to both centuries and decades a long time ago, and using "The Eighteenth Century" allows them to reserve "the 1700s" to mean 1700-1709, so solving the decade naming problem that you mentioned.
There are lots of events that are named using the ordinal-century naming system; the military anarchy in the Roman Empire in 235-285 is usually known as "The Crisis of the Third Century", for example; if that's something you need to refer to on a regular basis, then knowing the century-naming system will help.
If you're writing for a general audience who have little call for thinking of dates before their own lifetimes, then "the 1700s" for the century rather than "The eighteenth century" is the better choice, because many people wrongly think that the eighteenth century is the 1800s and many others have to remember to add or subtract one to work out when is being referred to.
First decade of the 2000s?
Also I've spent too much time as a history nerd. I actually found both of them equally easy to read -- though I remember the time when I was confused by 1800s vs 19th century, so I approve of the change.
The real issue is that we do not name our centuries like we do with our hurricanes/typhoons. If we had Century Bertha and Century Hugo there would be no confusion. Everyone would know without a doubt that the Revolutionary War for Independence was fought in Century Sophronia.
Pratchett's "Century of the Fruitbat" was clearly the right idea.
I remember when I was a kid I had problems with this kind of conversion, but now in many I think it’s the opposite. If you mention for example the “18th century composers”, I’ll immediately think of Bach and Mozart, while “composers of the 1700s” will make me stop and think because it sound a bit weird.
I suppose it’s possible to get used to either convention.
Yeah, I would imagine that academic historians, for example, can probably parse and mix either convention without any issue.
"This leaves ambiguous how to refer to decades like 1800-1809. For these you should [...] manually write out the range"
How about "the 1800s decade" and the "1800s century" ?
You're right. The people saying "18th century sounds nicer" are right too. So I think Pinker should write "1700s" and Andrew Lloyd Webber is fine with writing "18th century."
I like using the aughts to refer to 2000-2009! 19 aughts sounds fine
I never thought about this but it’s true! I’m never using the century thing again.
"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”."
Shouldn't that be the "191st decade”?
"181st decade" is correct in that example. It's helpful to observe that the very last year finally matches the name. So, for example, the 19th century is from 1801 to 1900, and the 2nd millennium is from 1001 to 2000.
Similarly, if we really did name each decade, the last year of each decade would match its name as well. So 1801 to 1810 would be the 181st decade.
Great explanation, thanks! I will use "Last year matches the name" to think about counted centuries/decades/whatever in the future.
(Also thanks Brian for bringing this up, I thought at first 191st must be right, too...)
No problem! I also think it's helpful to note that, at the end of the day, it's just math. It's not some naming convention peculiar to the Gregorian calendar or anything like that.
For example, your fourth decade is your thirties. It's not a naming convention; it's just math.
I thought 2000-2009 was called "the oughts". Pretty concise... What's not to like?
The oughts is 1900-1909; the naughts is 2000-2009. At least, that's what they immediately make me think of.
And to go with any decade 2-digit prefix, you can make it "the twenty-oughts" or "the fifteen-oughts".
Agreed! Yes to clarity! No to showy!
Yes to 1600s! No to 17th century!
To deal with trailing zeros in written form I agree with laying out the range as in 1600-1610.
In speech, I support noughts or oughts as in “the sixteen hundred oughts or the two thousand noughts”
The appropriate way to refer to the 1980s is not at all.
Agreed! I always have to mentally backtrack to years when someone references "the 18th century," etc.
But your example of the person being followed (they not he) hit on another problematic development in vocabulary evolution: The use of "they" for non-binary identity. I believe that people can be whatever they like, I just wish the terminology could be less ambiguous. Why not have a new pronoun, like what happened with Ms. in the 1970s? These days I imagine a new pronoun for non-binary would be adopted quickly, and would be truly helpful to the very people who need it.
Believe me, we tried this, and a significant portion of people's response was (and still is), "That's dumb and confusing. Why can't you just use normal pronouns like a normal person?"
I agree with you, though. I generally prefer a reasonable set of neopronouns to singular they.
I propose we reintroduce the old English letter þ (thorn) and the singular non-binary propoun "the". For pronunciation the "th" is pronounced as in "they" or "them" and the whole thing rhymes with He and She. The object form would be "thim" and the possessive "this".
There is another advantage to this proposal: the French will be deeply annoyed by their inability to pronounce it. This will be an excellent revenge as it is their fault þ was lost in the first place.
Oh, Dynomight, I'm so, so in love with your idea of using wildcards to express (written) date ranges. 200*s. 20**s. "In the 23rd year of every milennium" = *023. It's perfect!
> Period First Day Last Day The 18th century 1 Jan 1701 31 Dec 1800 The 1700s 1 Jan 1700 31 Dec 1799
What is going on with this sentence?
Ack, Substack's inability to deal with tables strikes again. Should be fixed now, sorry.
I absolutely agree with you (dynomight). Whenever I encounter a term like "16th century", I have to do some mental gymnastics to figure out what that means, exactly. And I'm not much of a gymnast. Same thing with military time. I once ran an open-source app that was useful to me but it had the very annoying feature that everything was expressed in military time. Damn near drove me crazy. (Note that I'm really terrible at doing arithmetic in my head).
As someone from Europe, I love what you call military time (also hate that you call it that). We don't do mental arithmetic on the numbers though, we just think in them directly. When your entire society runs on this convention, it's actually very nice (not to mention unambiguous).
Also it's actually shorter, e.g. you'd see opening hours for a cafe as "8-16", or opening hours for a business "9-17", or phone support open between "11-14". Good luck cramming that information in as little space using the PM/AM abomination.