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Let's stop counting centuries


One-indexing problems in everyday life

The Enlightenment is conventionally placed in the last two-thirds of the 1700s, though it flowed out of the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Reason in the 1600s and spilled into the heyday of classical liberalism in the first half of the 1800s. But still—if you’re like me, you’ll find the question much easier to answer given the second version of the sentence, because you remember the American revolution as starting in 1776, not in the 76th year of the 18th century. People count centuries in formal writing, and I don’t suggest you buck this convention too hard.

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Counting Centuries