STUFF
SUBSCRIBE (FEED)
RELATED POSTSThe Usability of Year Names
(File Under: Yes, these are the things I think about)
During a presentation at eTail Philadelphia, one of the speakers was talking through some year names — oh-five, oh-six, etc., when something he said startled me. He said “oh-ten” (as in 2010). Although technically it seems correct, it was completely unexpected to hear someone say three digits of a year name (or is it number?).
It got me thinking — for my entire life, year names have had a certain rhythm: seventy-six, eighty-five, ninety-four, etc. “Year two-thousand” totally bucked the trend, but that seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and the millenium hype only fueled that thought. “Oh-one” and “oh-two”, followed, quickly returning the cadence of year names back to normal. Even “oh-ten” seems like it might be usable, but “oh-eleven” sounds completely preposterous. Then again, saying just “eleven” sounds ridiculous too!
The bottom line here is that a paradigm shift is upon us — the way we say year names will have to change, if only for a few years. It will be quite intereting to observe how people adjust to it.
April 2nd, 2007 at 10:11 pm
Simple. From 2010 onward it will just be “twenty”. It will be “class of oh-nine”, “class of twenty-ten”, “class of twenty-eleven”, etc. This will be sufficient until around 2021, where saying “class of twenty-one” sounds normal again.
April 3rd, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Sometimes, I like to use “aught”, like “aught seven”. I figure, down the road, I’ll be able to tell my grandkids about the “blizzard of aught five” and other such embellished nonsense. It just has more gravitas.
September 4th, 2008 at 10:56 am
A funny update on this subject. I was watching the news today, there was an announcement from Chicago concerning their bid for the 2016 Olympics. The woman who was making the announcement pronounced “2016″ THREE different ways, and eventually just said “the future”.
It went something like:
“The twenty-sixteen olympics…”
“The olympics in two thousand and sixteen”
“…in two-sixteen”
“the olympic games… in the future”
So it certainly will be interesting to see how people adjust to this. Barack Obama mentioned the 2016 bid in one of his speeches, and used “twenty sixteen” throughout, everyone seemed to understand.