Frank Erskine wrote: > On Sun, 18 Aug 2013 23:35:09 +0100, Richard Smith > <richard@ex-parrot.com> wrote: > >> On 18/08/13 22:53, Charles Ellson wrote: >>> On Sun, 18 Aug 2013 22:06:19 +0100, Graeme Wall >>> <rail@greywall.demon.co.uk> wrote: >>> >>>> On 18/08/2013 20:30, Richard Smith wrote: >>>>> On 18/08/13 20:24, Graeme Wall wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> 1900s plural is the decade, just as 1920s plural is the decade. >>>>> >>>>> You may use that convention, but a lot of people do use 1900s to mean >>>>> the century, so the ambiguity is still there. >>>> >>>> Not something I've noticed, >>>> >>> Nor me. >> >> Whilst I don't doubt you, it really does surprise me. "1900s" is >> perhaps not the best example, but have you really never heard or seen >> "In the 1700s ..." and thought it probably mean the whole century rather >> than just its first decade? I think if I heard that, I'd assume it >> meant the century by default. >> >> Perhaps there's some sort of regional or generational difference in >> usage that I've not noticed before. >> > I'd have thought that for a family tree or any family history, > precision to merely the century would be fairly insignificant in the > light of other related data :-) > Not if the sentence reads something along the lines of ..."In the 1700s, one did not have electricity, telephones, or TVs." Those facts were true for all dwellings through about 1880 or so, not just in 1700-1710. I've found that saying "18th century" when meaning the years between 1700 and 1800 confuses the casual reader, and most of the people who read my family histories ARE fairly casual about it. Stopping a minute to think, to remember, interupts the flow of the narrative. It therefore makes the life of my reader easier (and my point easier to find) when I say "The 1700s..." instead "The 18th century". Your readers may be less casual than mine, of course. Cheryl