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Honey chile I am a born and raised southern gal from the delta in Mississippi. When I moved to the New Orleans area as a teenager my accent was so thick no one could understand me. I've spent the last 18 years as a public speaker and I still have people comment on the Southern accent and because, still living in the South, I've heard not only Southern lingo my whole life (there's a great thread going with southern sayings) I've heard the wrong pronunciation and use of common words my whole life.
I was thrilled to find that link today because there are always words I'm afraid to use around more "civilized" folk because I'm never positive of which one is correct.
I'm especially guilty of the one that said "Eighteen Hundreds or Nineteenth Century". I'll say seventeen hundreds or eighteen hundreds because even though I know better if I stop and think about it, it always initially confuses me when someone says Eighteenth Century - I have to stop and think and realize they are referring to the seventeen hundreds. I guess I'm guilty, like the author said, of "being weak in math and history alike."
From the link........
Eighteen hundreds, sixteen hundreds and so forth are not exactly errors; the problem is that they are used almost exclusively by people who are nervous about saying nineteenth century when, after all, the years in that century begin with the number eighteen. This should be simple: few people are unclear about the fact that this is the twenty-first century even though our dates begin with twenty. For most dates you can just add one to the third digit from the right in a year and youve got the number of its century. It took a hundred years to get to the year 100, so the next hundred years, which are named 101, 102, etc. were in the second century.
This also works BC. The four hundreds BC are the fifth century BC. Using phrases like eighteen hundreds is a signal to your readers that you are weak in math and history alike.
