I sparked a little conversation on Facebook recently when I insisted on pointing out that the current decade did not end at the end of 2009, but will end at the end of 2010. Some would call it nit-picking, but I simply call it standing up for facts. There was no year 0 A.D., so the first decade A.D. was from the years 1-10, the second decade was 11-20, and so on down to our present decade of 2001-2010. The same thing happened with our transition from the 20th Century to the 21st. Most of the millennial celebrations took place at the beginning of the year 2000, when they should have occurred at the beginning of 2001.

My understanding is that we can largely thank Dionysius Exiguus and St. Bede the Venerable for the year-numbering scheme that references the Incarnation as the central event, but leaves out a zero or null year.

Now, we like to refer to our decades with names, such as "the Roaring 20s" or "the Naughty Oughties" (I saw that last one in a British publication, and I like it.) However, such a naming convention tends to make the mind thinking of, for example, all the years ending in "0n", thus grouping 2000-2009 into a decade.  This is a perfectly reasonable social convention, but it is no cause to mislabel the decades, centuries or millenia when numbering them.  The "Whiny 90s" might have covered 1990-1999, but the 200th Decade A.D. was 1991-2000.

Again, some don't see any importance to getting it right.  But facts are facts.  To deny them is to slightly loosen your grip on reality.

Today, I read a column by Walter E. Williams, where he touched on this.  I liked this paragraph particularly:

So, we'll see you at the beginning of the decade, a year from now.

Further Reading:

Wikipedia Entry: Year Zero

Walter E. Williams: The Myth About U.S. Manufacturing, on World Net Daily