The End of the Decade
This isn’t hard. The first year was not year 0. It was year 1. January 1, 1AD to December 31, 1AD was the 1st year. The end of the first decade was December 31, 10AD. Now add 2000. This millenium started January 1, 2001. This decade will be over December 31, 2010. I know we’re all in a rush to get our Best of the Decade lists out. We desperately want to be out of the naughty-aughties. We are like children who count their ages in half years; but, why rush just to prove yourself innumerate?
Look, this is one of those things that ultimately doesn’t matter so I know you’re wondering my panties are all in a bunch. But if it doesn’t matter, shouldn’t we just try to be right? All of your Best of the Decade lists are wrong because something will almost certainly be added in the next 12 months. Given the nice roundness of 2010 you think people would want to do their decade lists next year anyway. You might guess that, but you’d be wrong.
Comments
8 Responses to “The End of the Decade”
Wrong-o, nerd. Know the calendar? It’s changed a bit since “The Year 1.” So, it’s all kind of… what’s the word? Arbitrary. And there was no “year 1″ anyway, not until centuries later, when somebody decided Jesus was important enough to name a new era after him.
I didn’t enter my 30′s at age 31. That is to say, when I turned 30, I didn’t claim to be in my late 20′s, though I was still getting carded, because I look younger than you. I think it’s the beard.
Personally, I don’t really think of this as the end of the decade, because it all seems kind of the same to me. It won’t seem like the end of the decade until a couple years past it.
But the word is “seem.”
2020, however, will feel like the twenties. Because it has the word twenty in it.
So, the new millennium started in 2000, because everyone said so. It wasn’t really 1000 years since the year 1000, because we lost some time when we switched calendars back in… um… the middle ages or thereabouts. I’m not going to wikipedia this, but you get my point.
And besides trying to argue the factuality of your post I’ll just say you should get over it. Next time you’re tagging a post as “rant” put down the beer and read it to see if it adds anything worthwhile to anyones life.
No offense, Dan-o, but this is the most useless kind of argument you could have launched on this issue. This isn’t about “seems” and “arbitrary” or matters of your opinion or personal taste. And it isn’t at all true that “everyone” said that the millennium started in 2000. It is a matter of how we count that makes the things I said in my blog factually true. The year 1 was not called AD 1 during AD 1 but it is a fact there is a year 1 now and it is the first year of the current calendar system, the one by which we name decades, centuries and millennia. You entered your “thirties” when you turned 30. And it is also true that “a decade” is any given 10 year period. So if you want to make an end of the decade list and the decade you want to talk about is 2000 to 2010, then fine. If you want it to be 1994 to 2004 then so be it. But the definite article applies, in this case, to non-arbitrarily chosen dates. We are talking about THE decade. And the only objective decade under scrutiny is 1/1/01 to 12/31/10. If that gets your goat, I apologize but your temporal relativism applies only to you and not the objective world. Be mad if you want. I’d rather be right.
I hate to disagree with my most benevolent host, but I don’t think an absolute definition of “decade” as counted off from the year one is really meaningful here. There’s an entire argument on the subject here ( http://www.cbssports.com/mcc/messages/chrono/19152664 ) so we need not repeat it. I fall in the camp marked out by this comment: “It has nothing to do with counting the groups of years from year 1. It has to do with the common usage of the term ‘decade’. Unlike centuries, ordinal references to decades are uncommon. The common usage of the term decade, like the ’80′s’ has to do with what the vast majority of people interpret that word to mean. After all, a decade is merely a grouping of 10 years. And traditionally those begin with 0: 70′s, 80′s, etc.”
By the way, you’ll have to skip to every fifth or so comment in that thread if you want to read the intelligent ones. Four-fifths of the people in that argument are morons arguing endlessly about how to count. Only a small percentage of people get that at root it’s about semantics and definitions.
The “grouping of ten years” definition of “decade” also applies to a casual definition of a century being “a grouping of 100 years.” For example, “The American Century” need not run from January 1, 1901 to December 31, 2000. But whatever 100-year span makes sense to the historian; and I acknowledged as much in my comment above. However, the fact remains that if you want to say “the end of the the decade” you’re appealing to an objectively determined grouping of ten years that is largely understood and agreed upon. The amount of debate on the topic indicates such a 10-year designation does not exist in this context. Phrases like, “the first ten years of the millennium” don’t solve the problem since they rely on the same counting error as “The decade” does. Like I said above, if you want to write an end of the decade list and the decade in question is 2000 to 2009 that’s fine, but you’re forced into spelling that out. I’ve read several lists that do say as much, e.g., “Best Albums: 2000-2009″ those don’t offend me at all.
Similarly if the decade in question is “The Aughts” as some list makers have labeled their lists, that’s fine too. The 80s are the years that run from 1980 to 1989, no doubt, similarly “the aughts” are the ten years that have a 0 in the tens place. I’m not so dumb as to think their aren’t 10 groupable years here. But appeals to “The Decade” are connotatively incorrect or uselessly vague. The only objectively determinable decade began 1/1/01 and ends next December, the rest, we should be humble enough to recognize is subjective and should be pointed out by polite writers.
Mmf. My take on it is: the only common usage we have for referring to ten year groupings is the intervals beginning with zero and ending with nine. They are usually referred to by a catchy numeric nickname (the eighties, nineties, sixties, blah blah blah, and also the aughts or maybe the zeroes). But it is widely understood that when somebody refers to “the” decade, the term is interchangeable with the same ten year span that just wrapped up. In 1999, somebody saying “the” decade would have clearly been talking about the 90s, not the ordinally correct decade that runs from 1991-2000.
It’s fine to separate the two most common ways the term decade might be used – although the most common one (my favorite) is far and away more prevalent than its nearest competition (yours). I don’t have a problem with proper delineation. But getting up in arms about article usage is basically arguing mathematical correctness over near-universal usage. We all know what decade a writer is talking about when he refers to the end of “the” decade. Especially when the reference is made (as it almost always is) in 1989, 1999, 2009, etc.
I would submit that the “amount of debate” you mention is driven by a small but vocal pocket of pedants, linguists, mathematicians, and historians (and the socially unfortunate intersections in that Venn diagram). The general population is fine with “the” decade running from 0-9. And I have some poll results right here to back up my TRANSMISSION INTERRUPTED
I repeat your mmf. I don’t think my backers are nearly the marginal group you seem to think they are and I think most people are quite comfortable with decades running from 1-10, at least as comfortable as they are with 0-9. So comfortable in fact that there is an ensuing debate about this issue every 9th and 10th years of a real decade or every 10th and 11th years of a cultural/colloquial one. But the debate proves my point. Just say what decade you’re talking about and the debate never starts.