Katie Couric of the CBS Evening News did it. People magazine did it. Even my minister did it.
Couric said that one good thing about this decade is that it’s almost over. People has the “Best of the Decade.”
Now, I’m all in favor of parties, and if we want a party to commemorate the roll-over of a zero, let’s do it.
But “the” decade ends after next year, at the end of 2010.
Let’s pretend we’re counting the railroad cars passing by at the crossing.
Are you ready? Here it comes. The first car we will call…wait for it…”one!” We don’t call the first car “zero.”
There was no year “zero.” So “the” decade is one thru ten.
If we want to count any arbitrary ten years in a row a decade, that’s fine, too. A decade is ten years. People magazine helps a bit by adding “2000-2009” but then it just becomes wrong, doesn’t it?
“The” decade is the ten years beginning with one and ending with ten.
Math is so hard.
The next ground shaking cultural issue to address:
Should we call next year “Twenty-ten” or Two thousand ten”?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
But then why do we name our decades "the eighties," or "the nineties?"
ReplyDeleteInteresting question.
ReplyDeleteThat seems to be a valid way to group ten years. I guess any ten years is a decade. We do have more than one way to organize a group of ten years. Calling a decade "the eighties" is acknowledging the digit in the tens place.
When I hear talk of "the" decade without any modifier or clarification, the default position for me is to return to the staring year and begin counting.