Happy new decade!

A local news channel presented the results of a poll last night. They asked people to respond to the question: When does the next decade start?

Well, one-third of the people said 2020 and the other two-thirds said 2021.

Well, they're both right. And both wrong.

You see, a decade is just a group of ten years. Any ten years. Humans defined the fairly arbitrary concept of decade to begin with, so we get to apply it any way we want.

For example, if you were an historian, you could write a book titled something like A Decade of War, 1935-1945. Or if you were compiling a new album (shows how old I am), you could call it Rock and Roll's First Decade: 1952-1962. It depends on what your purpose is.

The same goes for centuries, and those who were alive in 2000 remember we went through a similar debate then too (and similarly ended without any resolution).

But it's very simple. It depends on what you're calling it.

If you call it the 20th century, then the "20th" implies that your counting from something. What are you counting from? The beginning of the Christian era. There was no year 0, so we start with the year 1. This means the 1st century went from 1 to 100, the 2nd century went from 2 to 200, and the 20th century went from 1901 to 2000.

However, if you're talking about the "1900's", that can only mean one thing: the 100 years that begin with a "19", or 1900 to 1999.

In the same way, the start of the new decade depends on which decade you're talking about. If you're talking about the 3rd decade of the 21st century, then that's very clearly 2001 to 2100. However, if you're talking about the 20's, then that means 2020 to 2029.

Of course, no one is going to refer to it as the 3rd decade. They're going to refer to it as the 20's.

But if they're waiting to celebrate until next year, then they--like two-thirds of those poll respondents--are wrong.

Happy 2020's everyone!