Name the year

Almost a month into the first year of the new decade and the time may have come to pick a side: is it ‘twenty-ten’ or ‘two thousand and ten’?

Most people seem to be automatically going with the latter, but they are wrong to do so, claims one American group.

This is NAGG (the National Association of Good Grammar), a small group that may actually just be one bloke, a cat and a kettle (they don’t even have their own website). Despite their size, they are reportedly very vocal on this subject. They’re adamant it should be ‘twenty ten’ and are, frankly, exceedingly put out that we spent the last ten years saying ‘two thousand’. Founder Tom Torriglia points out that we are not following the pattern of the twentieth century.

Prince never sang, ‘Tonight we’re going to party like it’s one thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine’, that’s for sure.

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Author: Catie Holdridge

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Catie joined Emphasis with an English literature and creative writing degree and a keen interest in what makes language work. Having researched, written, commissioned and edited dozens of articles for the Emphasis blog, she now knows more about the intricacies of effective professional writing than she ever thought possible.

She produced and co-wrote our online training programme, The Complete Business Writer, and these days oversees all the Emphasis marketing efforts. And she keeps office repartee at a suitably literary level.