Let's stop counting centuries

Core proposal: use “1700s” instead of “18th century”

• Many agree “1700s” (or similar) maps more directly to dates people remember (e.g., 1776) and avoids the off‑by‑one mental step.
• Supporters say centuries are arbitrary cultural bins anyway, so explicit numbers like “1700s” or date ranges are clearer and shorter.
• Critics find “18th century art” more natural or prestigious than “1700s art,” especially in formal or art‑historical contexts.

Off‑by‑one, year zero, and calendar conventions

• Recurrent confusion: 20th century = 1901–2000, there was no year 0, AD starts at 1.
• Some argue we should conceptually insert a year 0 (align with astronomical and ISO 8601 numbering) or treat 1 BC as year 0 retroactively.
• Others prefer defining the first century as shorter (99 years) or zero‑indexing centuries (“zeroth century”=0–99), though this is seen as impractical or confusing.
• BC/BCE centuries and calendar switchovers (Julian→Gregorian) are cited as even more conceptually messy.

Ambiguity around “1700s”, “2000s”, and decades

• In some usage, “1700s” or “1900s” means 1700–1799 / 1900–1999; in others it means only 1700–1709 / 1900–1909.
• “2000s” can mean 2000–2009, 2000–2099, or even 2000–2999; participants highlight this as a real ambiguity.
• Proposed fixes:
  • “twenty hundreds” vs “two thousands” for different ranges
  • “aughts” / “noughties” / “ohs” / “20‑aughts” / “00s” / “first decade of the 2000s” for 2000–2009.
• Some languages (e.g., Finnish, Swedish) naturally use “1900‑century/era”-style terms instead of counting centuries; others lean heavily on Roman‑numeral centuries or idiosyncratic age/decade phrasing, which can also confuse speakers.

Pedantry vs practicality

• One camp: this is minor; people can learn “subtract 1” and move on; changing entrenched conventions (and all related software, books, habits) is unrealistic.
• Other camp: small clarity improvements matter, especially for communication and education; conventions can shift via publishers’ style guides and everyday usage without formal reform.
• Some see resistance as tradition‑defending or elitist; others see the proposed change as over‑pedantic and unnecessary.

Related conventions and analogies

• Comparisons drawn to:
  • 12‑ vs 24‑hour clocks (midnight/noon ambiguity).
  • Metric vs imperial units, Celsius vs Fahrenheit.
  • Zero‑ vs one‑based indexing in programming.
• General theme: humans mix ordinals, cardinals, and labels; many such systems are historically accidental yet persist.