JANUARY 14, 2010 ISSUE
50 Questions for 2009
Who says journalism isn’t participatory for the general public? For the past three years, High Country Press has done its best to fulfill its duty to provide answers to puzzling questions while giving a voice to locals with queries through its weekly column, Question Around the Office.
Each week, readers submit questions to High Country Press staff members and Managing Editor Sam Calhoun does his best to research the answers. Anyone can submit a question—the easiest way is to email sam@highcountrypress.com, but readers can also call us at 828-264-2262—and no question is too simple, too odd or too dumb. You’ll never know if you don’t ask, as they say.
During 2009, High Country Press provided answers to 50 different questions, which ranged from finding out why a street sign had never been installed on Highway 105 Bypass (after the column was printed on February 26, NCDOT installed signs, pleasing our reader) to what is a caucus (January 17 issue), from finding out what H1N1 stands for (May 7 issue) to if you can ride a horse to work (June 5 issue), and from finding out what smells in Boone on some afternoons (July 3 issue) to why a billboard was installed during 2009’s moratorium (September 3 issue).
Included below is our Question Around the Office from October 15, which we thought was timely for reprint in this issue, our Year in Review.
Question Around the Office
How Do We Refer to the Current Decade? Is It the Aughts?
Researched by Sam Calhoun
Published October 15, 2009
Staff and readers have engaged in a lively debate as of late concerning the proper name for the current decade. Two members of the staff cited the word “aught” as the proper prefix to the year; as an example, “back in 2007” could be referred to as “back in aught-seven.” We wondered if this was correct.
According to Williams Hale’s The World’s Work: A History of Our Time XXI, the decade from January 1, 1900, to December 31, 1909, is sometimes referred to as the 1900s, although that term can equally be used for the years 1900 to 1999. “The aughts,” or “naughts”—aught-aught (1900) through aught-nine (1909)—was one of the more popular contemporary terms for the decade, Hale claimed.
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the noun “aught” means “zero.” When pluralized, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, “aughts” refers to a decade, such as that from 1900 to 1909 or 2000 to 2009, whose digit in the tens place is zero. Therefore, the current decade can be labeled “the aughts,” and we are currently in “aught-nine.”
Although the term “aught” seems to have become less prevalent in everyday speech since the 1900s, a reader reminded us that it can still be found in a name of a popular American rifle cartridge. The .30-06 Springfield cartridge, which was introduced to the U.S. Army in 1906 and used until the early 1970s, is pronounced “thirty-aught-six.”
A Question for You…
Will the Current Year Be Called “Two-Thousand Ten” or “Twenty Ten?”
Before the ball even dropped in New York’s Times Square two weeks ago, national news channels and their talking heads were abuzz with discussions on how to properly refer to 2010 in everyday speech. Proper grammar aside, the country seems to be split on whether to call the current year “two-thousand ten” or “twenty ten.”
We want to know what you think 2010 should be called—and if you’ve heard it said another way, we want to hear that too. Email sam@highcountrypress.com with your thoughts and we’ll see what the consensus is here in the High Country!
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