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English language (monolingual) [PRO] General / Conversation / Greetings / Letters / Dates
English term or phrase:writing year in words in English
The other day on TV I heard a newscaster say "twenty-seventeen" for the year. I would like to know if it is proper --especially in legal documents-- when writing out the date in words to put, for example, "on the twelfth of January of twenty seventeen" or if it should be "two thousand seventeen". We used to write "nineteen ninety-five", but at the turn of the century we started putting "two thousand whatever". Is there any rule on this? Is there a difference between American English and British? Thanks!
Explanation: www.ocr.org.uk/.../64450-examiner-s-report-level-3-legal-word-processing-summer....in words should be two thousand and eleven, not twenty eleven, particularly in a legal document.
Thanks, Charles. I've already looked it up and listened to it...not my music.
"I suppose it's associated in my mind with discovering the country for the first time." I sincerely hope you've since had other opportunities to correct that image :)
I did say it was a terrible song, and believe me I am not a Schlager fan. But it was a big hit in Germany when I was on a school exchange, living with a German family. I've just looked it up; it was in 1971. I couldn't help hearing it all the time, and I'm afraid it stuck, though I haven't thought about it since. I suppose it's associated in my mind with discovering the country for the first time.
I'm a child of the 90s. The song you're referring to was recorded pre-1980s. Except for the Beatles, Bob Dylan and classical music, I don't know many singers/composers from before that era. Additionally, I don't listen to a lot of German songs and this is "Schlager," which I've always tried to avoid :)
OT: Die Prinzen and Heinz Rudolf Kunze is about everyone I could point you to. The latter has a very interesting background (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_Rudolf_Kunze ). I think he alludes to it in one of his songs.
... What I find curious is that in the old ProZ question, the ones defending the use of "hundreds" were native speakers of British English. The EU, as shown below, seems to use "hundreds" and Americans may have dropped "of our Lord," but you still see "in the year" preceding (two) thousand.
And Robert's link shows the version in "tenths" based on a US newspaper style guide. I am confused.
I think that's right. I confess I'm still in the habit of saying "two thousand and seventeen", but that's probably because after so long in Spain I'm mentally translating "dos mil diecisiete", and if I lived in the UK I'd have got into the twenty-seventeen habit by now.
No, "twenty one" and "twenty two" were never going to be viable, but in theory, after 2000, people could have switched to "twenty-oh-one", just as we call 1901 "nineteen-oh-one" (I wonder if people did at the time? Of course "nineteen one" would have worked, so it's not the same). But I think we'd all got so used to saying "two thousand and one" before the event, thanks to Kubrick, that it was bound to happen. So it's all his fault :)
I was told that things were expected to get back to normal in the early teens, and I think that's what has happened. Saying 'twenty two' etc would have been downright confusing. Some people who'd got used to using thousands carried on for 2010, 2011 etc, but I think we've all made the changeover now. Americans seem to like to talk in hundreds, up to vast amounts of them. I've frequently heard numbers such as 'thirty-three hundred' on the TV. I just can't visualise it so it calls for a wee spot of mental arithmetic.
I suppose the thing is that it was always inevitable that 2000 would be called two thousand, not twenty hundred. So you naturally continue with two thousand and one (especially considering the Space Odyssey), and so it continued for some years, by inertia.
And we call the year 1000 "one thousand", not "ten hundred", don't we?
But if we're happy saying "ten" in 1066, it's curious that most of us have taken quite a long time to get used to saying "twenty" in our century; even after 16+ years it's by no means universal. I don't recall anyone saying "twenty oh-one" or "twenty oh-two" at the time; it just didn't right somehow. I bet our descendants will say "twenty" when referring to our century just as we say "ten" when referring to William the Conqueror's. And people will slip neatly into "twenty-one oh-one" in 2101, having said "twenty ninety-nine" in 2099. Will they say "twenty-one hundred" in 2100, I wonder?
In the same vein, there was another one I can still hear in my head, which went "In the year twenty-five twenty-five...". Not two thousand five hundred and twenty-five, which wouldn't have scanned.
You've reminded me of a terrible pop song, which has tenaciously stuck to the back of my brain for years, as these things do: do you remember "Im Jahre Zweitausendzwei / ja da ist alles vorbei"? Perhaps you're too young. Back in the twentieth century it was somehow exciting to imagine the new millennium, as if everything would be different.
"Since most of us live under 100 years, we'll similarly understand what century is meant. Someone wearing a Class of '21 sweatshirt will be understood to be either 2021 or 1921, with no chance of confusion for the other. The '68 Ford Mustang does not refer to a horse ridden by a Mr. Ford in 1468." http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/263778/why-do-we-...
In German, you don't use "thousand," but say "nineteen hundred," etc. as Charles most recent discussion post shows. Germans typically use "thousand" for 1000-1099 and again starting at 2000.
EU publications: "However, in some legal documents, dates and reference to dates are written out in full: [...] The thirty-first day of December, nineteen hundred and eighty-one." http://publications.europa.eu/code/en/en-4100500en.htm
Thanks. I do stress this is only for legal documents (I'm thinking of notarial ones in particular, where they write out whole paragraphs of numbers, mostly to do with dates, folios, entries, etc.). I think changing them to numbers is perfectly fine for other less formal documents.
That's a perfectly defensible approach, I think. Mind you, for numbers generally people in the US often say "nineteen hundred" rather than "one thousand nine hundred", or even (for example) "twenty-six hundred" instead of "two thousand six hundred"; I heard this recently in coverage of the World Chess Championship when they were discussing players' ELO ratings. So you could defend the use of "nineteen hundred" in a date.
My approach with legal documents is to use like for like, so I would use "one thousand nine hundred sixty" (US) or "one thousand nine hundred and sixty" (UK), and I also never use commas between words that are part of the same number (so not "one thousand, nine hundred and sixty"). See rule 8b here: http://www.grammarbook.com/numbers/numbers.asp
Having said that, I'm basically with Phil; when I have the year in words in a Spanish document I usually put it in figures in the English translation. I have occasionally made an exception for deliberately archaic arbitration documents I get from one of my clients.
Phil's right about the UK, where the year is not very often written in words nowadays (though AllegroTrans disagrees with this, so perhaps it's not so rare), but it's done a bit more often in legal texts in the US. It used to be quite common practice.
As for the form of words, "one thousand nine hundred (and) sixty..." was standard up to the first half of the twentieth century, but it's quite rarely found in the latter half of the century. In the US, "nineteen hundred sixty" or "nineteen hundred and sixty" are more often found than just "nineteen sixty" in legal texts (including legislation). By the way, although in everyday life Americans nearly always say and write "nineteen hundred sixty" (or "two thousand sixteen"), and many think that it's wrong to include "and", American lawyers and legislators often write "nineteen hundred and sixty" or "two thousand and sixteen", in the British manner.
Difference between written and spoken use of years
11:08 Jan 12, 2017
Whenever stating a year in a formal document, I would generally write it in its numeric form (i.e. 2017). However, in UK English, the written form would be two thousand and seventeen, as opposed to the US version of two thousand seventeen. There does seem to be a recent change in both versions, however, where people say twenty seventeen, but I would never use this in a formal context.
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Answers
1 hr confidence: peer agreement (net): +6
writing year in words in english
two thousand and N (EN-UK) two thousand N (EN-US)
Explanation: www.ocr.org.uk/.../64450-examiner-s-report-level-3-legal-word-processing-summer....in words should be two thousand and eleven, not twenty eleven, particularly in a legal document.
peer agreement (net): +6