Thursday, August 7, 2008

My Latest Pet Peeve

Recently, I've heard it again and again. It's the same phrase over and over and now it's bugging me so much I can hardly stand it.

I heard it again today in an interview on the radio.

What, pray tell, could this HUGE problem be?

It's when people refer to years after 2009 in the same manner they do leading up to 2009. An example of what I find acceptable: "I will be attending the state fair in oh nine ['09]. Maybe I'll go again in two-thousand eleven [2011]."

Here's what I've been hearing lately: "I had a big year in oh five, oh six and oh seven ['05, '06, '07]. I'm hoping to get a long-term contract that pays me well into oh 10 or oh 11 ['010, '011].

What is the oh in oh eleven? Once we hit 2010 shouldn't it just be in twenty ten? How about in '11?

Yep, that's my new pet peeve.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hear you, brother. This is a prevalent issue in budgetland. I personally go with the plain "11" as in "don't present to me any ideas for new spending in the next biennium because I can guarantee we'll be cutting your budget in 10 and 11."

Unknown said...

I also might get annoyed at people who keep saying "two thousand" instead of "twenty." But it's definitely not as bad as "oh-ten" etc.

Anonymous said...

o4

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

OH, you mean q-pon has been replaced? Still my favorite pet peeve of yours!

Anonymous said...

I think the simple solution is to just go out and say the whole "twenty ten" or "twenty eleven" as the shorthand.

Look at it this way: "oh-nine" is 2 syllables, while "twenty ten" in its entirely is only three syllables.

This awkward year pronunciation era won't happen for another 1,000 years, so I guess we're special.

So, for example, you could say: "I had fun in oh-seven ('07), oh-eight ('08) and oh-nine ('09), and plan to have more fun in twenty ten (2010) and eleven ('11).

The one difficulty will come with the "2009-2010" school/fiscal year, where saying "two thousand nine/twenty ten" would be awkward. Oh well, life's the shits my friends.