i keep telling people the twenty-zero decade ended a year ago. decades do not work the same way as centuries. that's because we refer to decades using cardinal numbers (e.g. the "nineties") and we refer to centuries using ordinal numbers (e.g. the "twenty-first century").
when you use ordinal numbers, it means you're counting, and that means you need to make sure you count the first set. this is the 21st century, because the first century was the set of 100 years that ran from 1-100, the second century was the set of 100 years that ran from 101-200, etc. for decades, we're not acting like we're counting the decades. by calling a decade "the oughts" or "the zeros" or the prior decade "the nineties", we're instead referring to the digit in the tens column when we write or say the date. 1990 thus was part of the 90s, just as 2000 was part of the 00s. 2010 was part of the "teens" because there is a 1 in the tens column of 2010. the current decade would only begin with 2011 if we referred to it as "the second decade of this century" or the "202nd decade".
no one listens to me. luckily, i'm unlike to have to make this point next year.
