What is the correct way to abbreviate a year?
Word forms: yrs. yr. is a written abbreviation for year.
- 1066 = ten sixty-six (not one thousand and sixty-six)
- 1776 = seventeen seventy-six (not one thousand seven hundred seventy-six)
- 1815 = eighteen fifteen.
- 1946 = nineteen forty-six.
- 1997 = nineteen ninety-seven.
- 2010 = twenty ten.
- 2017 = twenty seventeen.
- 2020 = twenty twenty.
The year 2000 is sometimes abbreviated as "Y2K" (the "Y" stands for "year", and the "K" stands for "kilo" which means "thousand").
Place an apostrophe before the last 2 digits of a year to abbreviate it. Say you want to shorten the year 2022 in a sentence. Instead of writing 2022, you can abbreviate the year as '22, using an apostrophe in place of the 20.
The international standard recommends writing the date as year, then month, then the day: YYYY-MM-DD. So if both the Australian and American used this, they would both write the date as 2019-02-03.
Years should be expressed as numerals except at the beginning of a sentence. Most style guides agree that beginning a sentence with a numeral is poor style, so years placed at the beginning of a sentence should be written out as words.
“The 70's are my favorite decade.” or “The '70s are my favorite decade.” If you guessed the latter, you are correct. The apostrophe in '70s is forming a contraction for the numbers you are replacing in the spelled out version “1970s.” Never put the apostrophe before the “s” when describing decades.
We can write 2010 in words as Two thousand and ten. The word form of 2010 is the number name for 2010, that is Two thousand and ten.
If we follow the same line of reasoning, it is not correct to write 2010's because the year stands for twenty tens and tens is a plural of ten. The correct way to write it is 2010s.
The number name of 2008 is Two thousand and eight, i.e., 2008 = Two thousand and eight.
How do you abbreviate the 1980s?
Abbreviating decades
(" '80s" is abbreviated from "1980s" and so is usually written with the apostrophe, but I think some style guides prefer to avoid the apostrophe altogether. Note that this is different from the incorrect usage "1980's", which is correct only if you're saying "belonging to 1980" or "1980 is".)
It's therefore a good idea to do what they say. Instead of writing just 20, make sure you write the year in full: 2020 on all important documents and checks.
When you shorten 2012 to just '12, use an apostrophe. That versatile punctuation mark (a robust one being correctly used is pictured at left) fills in for the missing numbers, just like it fills in for missing letters in a contraction. Use it for decades, too!
The 's' in "the 1950s" indicates that the entire decade, ten years, beginning in 1950, is meant. As noted, the last case indicates that your mother was born in the year 1950.
Orthographically, the decade can be written as the "2000s" or the "'00s".
Strictly speaking, '90s, with the apostrophe, is correct.
Explanation: According to AP style, the only time you use an apostrophe s to pluralize is in the case of single letters: mind your P's and Q's!
Most writers nowadays favor the 1900s, but some go with the 1900's. If numerals are used to identify decades, the '30s is widely used, but you will also see the 30's, and occasionally even the '30's.
For instance, writing “the 1960's” when referring to that entire decade is incorrect; instead, one should write “the 1960s.” The same rule applies to the plural form of any other type of number, such as describing someone's age (e.g. “clients in their 80s”), and is discussed further in section 4.38 on page 114 of the ...
When speaking about a certain period of time with multiple years included in it—say, 1990 to 1999—then add an “s” and omit the apostrophe. CORRECT: If I could travel back in time, I would go to the 1930s for sure. WRONG: If I could travel back in time, I would go to the 1930's for sure.
How do you write the year 2009?
2009 in words is “Two Thousand and Nine”.
2013 in words is written as Two thousand thirteen.