Interesting. But if you ask any working math teacher, you’ll hear (I predict) that it “should” be pronounced “two hundred three and seven tenths.” (No need to take my word for it!)
Never studied maths under an American teacher, but it strikes me that such a way of reading is not only inconvenient but also irrational. If you don’t say “two hundreds, no tens, three units”, why would you go on to say “seven tenths”? And it suggested that if there were more than one place of decimals, a US maths teacher would tell me that I ought to go on to specify the quantity of hundreths, thousandths, etc?
Can you provide a cite, please? If it’s such a standard thing then it should be objectively demonstrable.
I asked my fiancée about this, who works with a team entirely comprised of Americans with Master’s and Doctorate degrees in mathematics. She’s never heard a single human being ever say a number like this.
The first search words I used: word “and” “reading decimal numbers”
The first hit on that page of results (look at pages 5 and 6):
Here’s an excerpt, showing some examples (discussion of the use of “and” begins on page 5. Sample instruction: “Read an “and” to indicate the decimal point.”).
A second result from the first page of hits, grabbed at random:
(italics mine)
The ease of finding these imply that it’s a fairly common piece of knowledge (in American pedagogy, anyway). I’d invite you to use either my search words or similar ones, and find as many examples as you’d like.
I was surprised by what seems to be emotion in a couple of the posts about this; there’s an appearance of writers feeling some sort of personal sense of offense. Is there a reason to get exercised about this topic? After all, it’s merely usage: neither “right” nor “wrong.”
Huh, this is interesting, and not something that I’ve even noticed. I do say two-thousand-fourteen rather than twenty-fourteen, as most people I know do. I think it’s just carried on from the fact that I’ve said two-thousand-xxxxx for most of my life (throughout the 2010s), so the phrasing stuck.
Also, two-thousand-fourteen isn’t actually that long to say. It’s not like in the 1900s, when they would have had to say one-thousand-nine-hundred-and-fourteen. Once we get into higher numbers, people’ll probably revert to the old format. Maybe once we hit 2020, as Alley Dweller said, since that rolls off the tongue.
I have to agree. I always taught the kids that they should say “and” for the decimal point. So 203 is two hundred three, and 203.8 is two hundred three and eight tenths. Whether they do it once they were out of my school, though, I don’t know.
I pronounce the year as twenty fourteen, though. It just sounds right to me.
And now you may find that people’s choices about this become very noticeable (or at least that’s what happened to me.^_^)
I’ve a strong suspicion that it drops away (particularly since most people seldom have occasion to speak a decimal number that isn’t money). I find I usually say “point” (as in “two hundred three point eight”)…but I DO tend to refrain from using an “and” anyplace other than where the decimal point is (so would not say “two hundred and three point eight”). A partial tribute to math-teaching!
None of this really matters (so long as no one is confused). I just find the different choices interesting.
Yes, but it was always the “Twenty Twelve” London Olympics - never “Two Thousand and Twelve”.
Interesting–I wasn’t paying attention, I guess, because I didn’t remember that. I wonder what sort of discussions went on that led to a uniform use of “Twenty Twelve” in official language (instead of mixed usage)?
This is my thinking as well. Remember that the 20th century featured the dawn of “mass media” and high-speed communication. For the first time in world history, (almost) everybody in the world could hear about things almost as fast as they happened, as opposed to previous centuries when it might have taken days, weeks, or months for news to spread.
And so, everybody in the world got to spend the last several decades of the 20th century seeing the mass media positioning “THE YEAR 2000” as “THE FUTURE”, where everything would be amazing. We simply grew accustomed to saying “two thousand”.
The first house number I was aware of was the first house my parents bought, when I was five or six years old. I pronounced our house number, “two-seven-oh-seven”. Probably because, at that age, I didn’t really have a concept of numbers higher than 20 or so, and I just saw it as a series of familiar digits. We moved when I was 17, and our new house number was “ten-forty”, and every subsequent residence of mine has followed that pattern. I currently live at “five-twenty-seven”.
Funny you should mention that. I’ve been working my way through J.B Bury’s The Cambridge Medieval History, and I’m currently reading about 11th-century events. I read the years as “ten-XX”
Unless we think it sounds too much like singing, “In the year twenty-five twenty-five…” 
Personal experience without cites:
I teach in an American classroom, and it isn’t my personal opinions that I share. I teach what they need to know to demonstrate mastery of the subject on some standardized test. When asked to write a number in words the ‘and’ alerts you to place a decimal or fraction. However when saying a number, like 'The answer to number 3 is 5 point 2" that is fine. Many things are specific to math class, like other subjects and disciplines.
One hundred and 7 thousandths is 100.007
One hundred seven thousandths is 0.107 Yes, that shows up on standardized tests.
Back on topic, my grandmother always used expressions like “That was in the summer of aught three” to reminisce about the early 1900’s. I so believed ‘aught’ would come back! I used it faithfully, as did my family and friends. To no avail, we found. It did NOT catch back on. 
I have and I was never told not to say it as “something point something” unless it was a lesson in converting decimal to fractions. Even my calculus teacher said it that way.
As Cecil’s article notes, it should be naught. Aught basically means the opposite of zero.
For what it’s worth, I say the year as twenty-fourteen. Most people say it two-thousand fourteen, but I have heard both.
We are discussing usage not what it should be. My people said ‘aught’ and that was probably common. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_for_the_number_0_in_English
The whole ‘and’ conversation is like the grammar rules followed in formal essays vs. everyday usage.
You couldn’t use “twenty-2” for the obvious reason.
There was a problem with “Twenty-oh-eight” because “oh-ay” is a dipthong, a vowel slide. As we all know, diphthongs are difficult to articulate (particularly in American English) because producing them is a motor skill which has to be practised in order to obtain a good result.
In contrast, “nineteen” ended with ‘n’, so the nineteen-o’s and the nineteen aught’s were easy to pronounce.
And we could have gone with twenty-thousand-aught-eight, but once you put the ‘thousand’ in there to get the final ‘d’ to seperate the sounds, you don’t need the ‘aught’ anymore to seperate the ‘twenty’ from the digit.
Once we get into the twenty-twenties, the articulation will be very easy, so I certainly expect that pronunciation, but I think it’s happening anyway now that we’re out of the “oh’s”
Yes to both of these points: if your teacher wants you to use “and” only to mean a decimal point, in preparation for a standardized test or otherwise, then you’d best use “and” only to mean a decimal point–while in class. Otherwise, it’s just usage: dealer’s choice.
Virtually all the times I’ve heard someone refer to a year since 2000 with the “aught” construction, they seem to have been doing it archly or for comic effect. Possibly this is due to the widespread influence of The Simpsons, in which the ancient Mr. Burns has, in several episodes, used “aught” in naming years…
Good point. Simpsons are pretty dang influential. 
This entire discussion reminds me of the troubles I had, and still have, when I was told how to write checks.
Luckily that task is becoming rare.
Melbourne, I see what you’re getting at, but I don’t think it’s quite right. First, there are tons of diphthongs in English of all types – the very common “o” sound in, say, “go” is one (if you’ve ever learned, say, Italian or Spanish, you know how hard it is to shed this habit).
And, conversely, I don’t think “twenty-oh-eight” quite contains consecutive vowel sounds (which you’re right would be a slight difficulty for English speakers – though nothing a glottal stop wouldn’t fix, as in “uh oh”). The “-y” by itself might be “-ee,” but when followed by a vowel we have no trouble emphasizing this phoneme’s consonant potential – the "yuh"ness of “y.” So, “twentee - yo” comes out naturally.
Likewise with “oh-eight.” A Spanish speaker would have to insert a glottal stop, but not us – we just emphasize the “-w” which, as I said above, is already part of the English “long o” sound anyway. Thus, “owe - ate.” No problem.
It seems you may be confusing spelling with sounds.
Dickety-hundred, a dozen and twain.
The decimal meaning of “and” is one of those school rules of English, like the ones where you are told never to use “less” to mean “fewer” or to never end a sentence with a preposition. It’s not practiced in real life, even among professionals. Every mathematician I’ve ever encountered simply says “point” followed by the digits.
I really think it started as a way to teach children that decimals and fractions are the same thing. Because we do say, for example, 1 3/100 as “one and three hundredths.” But we sat “one point oh three” for 1.03.
As for the years, I’ve said 20-14 rather than 2,014 for a while, and I don’t think I’ve noticed people doing otherwise. I did hear “two thousand eleven” for a bit, though.
As for why we don’t just refer to the year as “twelve” or “fourteen,” I think it’s because we don’t want a single word fore a year. If you do it with fourteen, the stress is even wrong. “Back in '13” is said “Back in thir-TEEN,” and that just sounds weird.