# Why two thousand and fourteen? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 5, 2014, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-two-thousand-and-fourteen/694862 "2014-08-05T13:33:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Bozuit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/edb3f5/32.png) [@Bozuit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bozuit)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2014, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-two-thousand-and-fourteen/694862/21 "2014-08-06T00:01:47Z")
Because it sounds like the future in some crappy sci-fi. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2014, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-two-thousand-and-fourteen/694862/22 "2014-08-06T03:34:34Z")
According to the Ngram Viewer, the expression “nineteen hundred” was very common through the first half of the 20th century, and then dropped off in favor of just “nineteen”. I expect around the middle of the century, “two-thousand” will be replaced by “twenty” in naming the year. When it’s a new century, people are more inclined to be more exacting in the wording, and then slack off once they get used to it. > **[Google Books Ngram Viewer](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=nineteen%2Bhundred&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=17&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cnineteen%20hundred%3B%2Cc0)** > > Google Books Ngram Viewer I noticed that when we reached 2010, car people sometimes said “an oh-ten Camry”, which was a year newer than an oh-nine Camry. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2014, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-two-thousand-and-fourteen/694862/23 "2014-08-06T07:00:22Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > I din’t realize you were ailing. ☹ Pining for the fjords ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2014, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-two-thousand-and-fourteen/694862/24 "2014-08-06T07:07:11Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > I’ve heard that argument before, but like you I don’t believe anyone says “and” instead of “point.” At least not in English, anyway, I’m not sure about other languages. No one who ever interpret the “and” to mean “point” so anyone who actually did use it that way would need to explain it 100% of the time. Yup - it’s just one of those international differences that makes perfect sense to those familiar with it, and appears awkward to those who are not, but I concur - I don’t believe anyone uses ‘and’ to mean ‘point’ As a native Brit (and therefore lifetime user of the ‘and’ convention in numbering), when I hear the American usage “two thousand fourteen”, I have an ever so slight inclination to interpret the numbers as the beginning of a list “2000, 14, …”. I realise I’m interpreting it wrong, and it never causes a problem because the perception is never more than momentary, but there it is. ---
**Author:** ![PunditLisa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@PunditLisa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PunditLisa)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2014, 8:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-two-thousand-and-fourteen/694862/25 "2014-08-06T08:38:29Z")
I say two thousand fourteen… because that is what it is. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim_r.mortiss/32/142_2.png) [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_R.Mortiss)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2014, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-two-thousand-and-fourteen/694862/26 "2014-08-06T15:48:24Z")
I’ve been saying “twenty” ever since Twenty-oh-three. Yeah, I’m a trend setter. ---
**Author:** ![Laggard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9de053/32.png) [@Laggard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Laggard)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2014, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-two-thousand-and-fourteen/694862/27 "2014-08-06T15:59:32Z")
> [@PunditLisa](#): > > I say two thousand fourteen… because that is what it is. Yep ---
**Author:** ![Learjeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/94ad74/32.png) [@Learjeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Learjeff)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2014, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-two-thousand-and-fourteen/694862/28 "2014-08-06T16:43:50Z")
> [@Blaster\_Master](#): > > Oh, and I don’t use the “and”, I hate it. I hear it sometimes, particularly when people use any number that has hundred in it, but it makes a number more ambiguous, since I’d only use the and to add a decimal or fraction. I occasionally hear “Two Thousand and Fourteen” but the “Two Thousand Fourteen” construction seems much more common. I don’t think the “and” is ambiguous, but we were specifically taught to omit it back in grade school, year after year. Regardless, it’s common to hear people say “and” in the US. We were taught to omit “and” completely, from whole numbers. It certainly doesn’t add any information or make the number easier or faster to say. Compare: One million and one hundred and one thousand and nine hundred and ninety-nine One million, one hundred and one thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine One million, one hundred one thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine. Seems to me better the farther down the list I go. But I’m sure I slide a bunch of incorrect conjunctions in there when I’m not paying attention. “And” is used between the whole part and a non-decimal fractional part: “two and one half”, or when reading a decimal as a fraction, as reading 2.4 as “two and four tenths”. Back to the OP: I think I say “twenty fourteen” out of brevity rather than correctness. I’m pretty sure I’d consistently read the title of the movie as “Two Thousand One - A Space Odyssey”. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2014, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-two-thousand-and-fourteen/694862/29 "2014-08-06T17:03:36Z")
> [@Mr\_Shine](#): > > “One Thousand, Nine Hundred and…” is just too much of a mouthful to keep saying, … The Thai language actually does say all years like that. This year in Thailand is 2557 or “two thousand five hundred fifty-seven.” Myself, I say “two thousand fourteen” – no “and” – for 2014. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2014, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-two-thousand-and-fourteen/694862/30 "2014-08-06T17:46:11Z")
A couple of generations ago, it was common to hear an American say “Nineteen and fifty-three”,and the first decade of the century, as “Nineteen-aught-seven”. This usage was widespread in the rural south. The word “aught” has nearly completely disappeared as a representation of the digit zero. A rifle caliber would be called “Thirty-aught-six”. I’ve never seen it in print, it might be spelled “ought”, possibly as a form of “nought”, nothing. ---
**Author:** ![Bozuit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/edb3f5/32.png) [@Bozuit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bozuit)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2014, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-two-thousand-and-fourteen/694862/31 "2014-08-06T18:40:16Z")
> [@Bozuit](#): > > Because it sounds like the future in some crappy sci-fi. Hmm. What I should have said was “Because ‘twenty-fourteen’ sounds like the future in some crappy sci-fi.” ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2014, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-two-thousand-and-fourteen/694862/32 "2014-08-06T18:48:51Z")
> [@Learjeff](#): > > Compare: > > One million and one hundred and one thousand and nine hundred and ninety-nine > One million, one hundred and one thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine > One million, one hundred one thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine. > > Seems to me better the farther down the list I go. But I’m sure I slide a bunch of incorrect conjunctions in there when I’m not paying attention. I don’t know of anyone ever using the graped form - was that included for illustration of an increasing level of simplicity? Personally, I find the second example less ambiguous, no doubt in part because of familiarity, but it just seems to flow better for me. When spoken, I perceive the last example as a list of five distinct numbers. ---
**Author:** ![sbunny8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@sbunny8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sbunny8)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2014, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-two-thousand-and-fourteen/694862/33 "2014-08-09T15:50:14Z")
FWIW, I’ve heard the following exchange many many times… _What kind of car is that?_ **It’s a Toyota Camry.** _What year?_ **Twenty Oh Fourteen.** This happened because we got used to saying “twenty oh eight” and “twenty oh nine” and then… ooops. After the person realizes that “twenty oh fourteen” makes no sense, they usually restate it as “twenty fourteen” but sometimes they restate it as “oh fourteen”. ---
**Author:** ![Dead\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Dead\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dead_Cat)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2014, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-two-thousand-and-fourteen/694862/34 "2014-08-14T13:01:00Z")
I’m slowly coming round to the logic in the OP, I now manage to say “twenty fourteen” most of the time, but when referring to (say) 2006 I will still find myself saying “two thousand and six”. Sometimes I remember in time to say “twenty-oh-six”, before too long I think I will have fallen into line entirely. ---
**Author:** ![Jman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jman/32/4416_2.png) [@Jman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jman)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2014, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-two-thousand-and-fourteen/694862/35 "2014-08-14T15:12:42Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > I used “two thousand (no and)…” up until 2010. Then I switched to “twenty ten”, “twenty eleven”, and so on. I’m not sure why, but it suits me, and I don’t care what other people say. I only bring it up because it seems a lot of other people took the same path as me. Same here. It bothered me in 2012 (twenty-twelve), but by now, I’m used to hearing it both ways. My daughter, interestingly enough, prefers to say two thousand fourteen, even though I almost exclusively say twenty fourteen. She was born in 2008, so perhaps she’s used to hearing us say that, because we don’t say twenty oh eight or twenty aught eight. Though I do call that decade the Aughts. ---
**Author:** ![DeweyDecibel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d26b3c/32.png) [@DeweyDecibel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DeweyDecibel)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2014, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-two-thousand-and-fourteen/694862/36 "2014-08-14T15:59:32Z")
In the first 10 years of the century, saying “twenty oh-one” sounded awkward (and still does. Something about that -oh for zero) so we all went with the cultural familiarity of two thousand one (or two thousand and one). Now that we are in the teens, saying twenty fourteen is easier and sounds more natural. I’ve heard a lot of shifts to that usage. I might say a sentence like the following: “in nineteen eighty I was born in Boston, in two thousand three I lived in Chicago, and in twenty thirteen I moved to Cleveland” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-two-thousand-and-fourteen/694862.md?page=1)