STOP SAYING THE DECADE DIDN’T START YET

Listen. There are people who will tell you that “the decade” (whatever that means) doesn’t start until 2011. There are thousands of reasons to ignore these people, but here’s the best one: they’re wrong.

A decade is an arbitrary span of 10 years. You can distinguish one such span from another by any identifying feature you choose. For example, the decade called “the Sixties” consisted of the years 1960–1969. The decade when I believed “nascarpone” was a kind of cheese eaten at auto races was 1987–1996. The fact that “there was no year zero” IS IRRELEVANT.

The only time the year zero argument matters at all is when you’re using ordinal numbers, as in “21st century.” The 21st century began in 2001 because the first century began in 0001. But there’s no justification whatsoever for saying that the oh-tens aren’t underway. If we had referred to the Sixties as “the 197th decade” then, yes, the 202nd decade wouldn’t start until next year. But we don’t do that so SHUT UP SHUT UP OH GOD PLEASE SHUT UP.*

Thank you.

*forgive the harsh language; I’m still wasted on Manischewitz