It's nearly 2008

I remember asking someone in the early eighties "How should we refer to 2001 2002 2003 ...? Should we say oh-one, or two thousand one, or twenty oh-one?" I was a boring child. I tried looking up how people referred to 1901 and 1902. Some people in old movies said aught-one or not-one. That didn't sound right.

Now that we are almost out of the decade, I'm running through my memory and trying to remember how people referred to the years and record it here so the boring kid at the end of the next century can look it up and think "That doesn't sound right."

9/11, 7/7

When referring to huge happenings that take on a meaning of their own, the year is not in the name that people seem to use. These are simple happenings that do not need more information to tell people what you are talking about. Honestly I've had to stop a could of times and remind myself that 9/11 happened in 2001. 7/7 happened in 2005, I think ... anyway.

Conversation

In every day speech I've noticed that people just say the full year. "It happened in two thousand six." Or "It is a two thousand three model." In writing and blogs it is all over the place. You do not get a two digit date much anywhere beyond hand written notes. It is really a non issue. Nobody cares.

Y2K influence

I blame the year two thousand issue that was This was the buzz word of the late nineties. The only thing managers and PR people like better than an acronym is an acronym with numbers in it.

The place I worked hired a whole floor of people to fix problems and sign off on old programs saying they would at least function after the date rolled over. I wonder what percentage of the economy was running on the "millennium momentum."

The concept of a two digit date reaping havoc across the globe was in every TV show and news cast for a couple of years. "What's going to happen when the millennium clock rolls over?" Note I didn't say "ends" or "starts" or anything like that. That statement is technically correct because the year two thousand is the last year of the previous millennium, not the first year of the next millennium. It cracks me up that it was the most debated and promoted non-issue in history.

I think people just got used to the idea of not abbreviating the year portion of the date any more.

The true tell will come in about the middle of the next decade. What colloquialisms will people use to refer to this decade? ... I predict it will be a non issue and no one will really care. They will continue writing out the whole year until about the fifties when no one cares about Y2K or other such influences. Then it will all begin again.