In the hopes of making things easier for me, I’ve been referring to centuries by their number range—“the 1900′s” rather than “the twentieth century”. I’ve gotten one piece of feedback from someone who found it confusing, but how clear is it to most people who are reading this?
Perfectly clear, and probably in most contexts less likely to elicit off-by-one errors. The only confusing things I can see are:
Maybe someone might think you just meant the first decade of the 1900s?
Similarly, is “the 2000s” a century or a decade or a millennium? (This and
the previous problem are solved by using e.g., “19xx”, but that’s probably
only clear in written language.)
This style (it seems to me) is more common with older stuff (e.g., the 1800s
and 1700s), so someone might do a double-take at “the 1900s”, thinking it
sounds longer ago than it is.
There’s also the thing of how the twentieth century is, if we’re being
pedantic,
not the years 1900 through 1999, but the years 1901 through 2000.
I find it confusing as well: the century already has a different name and the decade does not, so it’s natural to assume “the 1900s” refers to the decade.
Also, I guess technically “the 1900s” includes 1900 but not 2000 and “the 20th century” includes 2000 but not 1900.
My first intuitive reaction would be to interpret “the 1900s” as early XX century. I would not expect, say, the 80s and the 90s to be part of “the 1900s”.
I think my brain latches onto associations with 00s (2000s) and 90s (1990s) and that makes “the 1900s” a bit disorienting. On the other hand phrases like “the 1700s” are fine, so you not technically wrong in using the expression, it’s just… awkwardly associative.
In the hopes of making things easier for me, I’ve been referring to centuries by their number range—“the 1900′s” rather than “the twentieth century”. I’ve gotten one piece of feedback from someone who found it confusing, but how clear is it to most people who are reading this?
Perfectly clear, and probably in most contexts less likely to elicit off-by-one errors. The only confusing things I can see are:
Maybe someone might think you just meant the first decade of the 1900s?
Similarly, is “the 2000s” a century or a decade or a millennium? (This and the previous problem are solved by using e.g., “19xx”, but that’s probably only clear in written language.)
This style (it seems to me) is more common with older stuff (e.g., the 1800s and 1700s), so someone might do a double-take at “the 1900s”, thinking it sounds longer ago than it is.
There’s also the thing of how the twentieth century is, if we’re being pedantic, not the years 1900 through 1999, but the years 1901 through 2000.
The person who was confused was so used to “the nth century” that “the xx00s” didn’t register as the same thing.
I find it confusing as well: the century already has a different name and the decade does not, so it’s natural to assume “the 1900s” refers to the decade.
Also, I guess technically “the 1900s” includes 1900 but not 2000 and “the 20th century” includes 2000 but not 1900.
My first intuitive reaction would be to interpret “the 1900s” as early XX century. I would not expect, say, the 80s and the 90s to be part of “the 1900s”.
I wonder if that reaction can be avoided by saying something like “all the 1900s”.
I think my brain latches onto associations with 00s (2000s) and 90s (1990s) and that makes “the 1900s” a bit disorienting. On the other hand phrases like “the 1700s” are fine, so you not technically wrong in using the expression, it’s just… awkwardly associative.