2000 or 20?

Kieran_Burns

Okay, this is bugging me now.

When do we start saying twenty eleven / twelve / thirteen / whatever, rather than two thousand and eleven / twelve / thirtenn / whatever?

This is important stuff.

SimonAH

I'm saying 'twenty eleven' now.

SimonAH

........also because in November there will be two separate points at which it will be twenty to eleven on the twentieth of the eleventh twenty eleven.....which is kinda geeky but cool.

sketchley

Equally important, is this decade the oneties?

DonDaddyD

When did anyone ever say one thousand nine hundred and one or ten or twenty and so on?

Just go with it become a trend setter, say Twenty eleven. Live in fear that everyone will think you're trying to be American, which is worse....

I will forever say 2011.

UndercoverElephant

Meh, I've been saying 20 since 2010.

Finbar Saunders

SimonAH wrote:

........also because in November there will be two separate points at which it will be twenty to eleven on the twentieth of the eleventh twenty eleven.....which is kinda geeky but cool.

But we don't write twenty to eleven as 2011. It should be 11 minutes past 8 in the evening, so 20:11, 20/11, 2011. But I'm not a geek, honestly.

Finbar Saunders

Can we say Twenty Twelve without paying a fee to the IOC or London Organising Committee?

rick_chasey

My history teacher always spoke of "nineteen five" rather than "nineteen oh five" when dscussing the first Russian Revolution in 1905.

The question is also,

who says thirteen-hundred for 1300?

If you do, how far do you go?

fifty hundred? 5,000?

Finbar Saunders

In Roman numerals it is MMXI and not XX XI, which could be mistaken for 31.

2011 is not only a prime number, it's a sexy prime (differs from the previous prime by 6). But I'm really not a geek.

CiB

It's a no-brainer this one.

What was that film called, from when it came out, for all of the late 1960's through to 1999 and beyond? 2001 - A Space Odyssey. Anyone who called it Twenty-Oh-One' warrants a slap. It therefore follows that this century shall forever refer to its years as two thousand and <something>. That's correct. The fact that the media, esp the BBC, and everyone I know has been getting it wrong for the last 10 years or so with Twenty-Ten etc just shows how easy it is for the whole world to be out of step. And twenty-ten or whatever is pug-ugly as far as speech goes

Two Thousand and... - that's how it should be. That's how it is in my world.

DonDaddyD

The post above makes me smile.

CiB

You can't argue with its veracity though can you?

davmaggs

It's the marketing power of the Olympics.

Thinking about it, just about every lobby trys to connect their pitch to the Olympics and I've jsut managed it with this post.