My e-mail inbox is full of "End of Decade" stories. Katie Couric referred to the end of the decade.
My poor wife has had to listen to my screams of how wrong all of these things are.
And then, long-tim SPJ member Stephen Goldstein shared one of his rants on this very same issue. With his permission here it is.
Listening now to "On Point," with Tom Ashbrook from WBUR-FM and National Public Radio, I’m hearing a discussion of the end of the first decade of the 21st century. A listener from Potsdam, NY, had it right in his comment posted on Facebook: Ashbrook and his guests are a year ahead with this discussion. I wonder what the program will do a year from now, when we do reach the end of the 10th year in the 21st century. Here’s the comment I posted on the "On Point" Facebook site while the program was rebroadcast on WAMU-FM from 9:05 to 10 pm:
Hey, Tom:
Until your discussion of "the end of the first decade of the 21st century," I had much more respect for your program and its information than for all other news programs I hear on NPR or on commercial stations.
However, I guess it takes one or two listeners from Northern New York (Edward Alfonsn (cq) from Potsdam, NY, is right) to point out that you, Time magazine and The New York Times are all a year early with your consideration of "the end of the first decade of the 21st century." The same misunderstanding was rampant when we welcomed the 21st century and "the new millennium."
As we reach the end of the year 2009, I’m hearing more references to "the end of the decade," similar to the mentions 10 years ago to "the new century" or "the new millennium" starting at midnight, Dec. 31, 1999, instead of just after midnight on Dec. 31, 2000.
The decade of the "oughts" — 2000 to 2009 — is 10 years (note figure for 10 and more), but we must finish 2010 (note the 10) to complete the first decade of the 21st century and the new millennium. The first (as in 1) year of the 21st century (100 years) was a year ending in 1, which makes sense: 2001.
If we consider the calendar people followed 2,009 years ago, no one thought of the year 1 or year 0. The Roman calendar was at year 775. Because January 2010 is in the year 5770 in the Jewish calendar, it was the year 3760 when you go back in time 2,010 years. In the Chinese calendar , Jan. 1, 2010, is in the year 4707, and 2,010 years ago, the Chinese were in the year 2697.
When children play hide and seek, they don’t count from 0 to 99; they count from 1 to 100. There’s no reason to end a decade, a century or a millennium in a year ending in 9.
Stephen H. Goldstein
Copy Editor
Transport Topics Publishing Group
Arlington, VA
As Stephen notes, this is the same battle fought — and lost — over when the 21st century began. Folks: There is a reason Arthur C. Clarke called his book "2001."