Grammar Girl here, today I'm going to address whether we should pronounce the year 2010

or 2010.

I've been delused with questions about how to pronounce the name of the year.

The two main contenders are 2010 and 2010.

Before the turn of the century, most people pronounce the years by chunking the first two

numbers together and the last two numbers together.

So we had 1950, 1985, and so on.

After the turn of the century, we started commonly pronouncing years the long way, 2001,

2002, and so on.

Now it seems that some people feel more comfortable continuing the trend, going from 2009 to 2010,

while the majority of people, according to polls I've seen, are eager to return to the

old convention, happily moving on from 2009 to the snappier sounding 2010.

I was able to come up with more examples of popular usage that follow the 2010 model.

We have prints telling us to party like it's 1999 and bad religion imagining a world with

10 billion people in their song, 10 in 2010.

The Norman Invasion, an important historic and linguistic event taking place in 1066,

and Columbus, sailing the ocean blue in 1492.

The Vancouver Olympics is being officially called the 2010 Olympics, and the London Olympics

in two years is being officially called the 2012 Olympics.

Chekowsky's famous composition is the 1812 overture, and Orwell's famous book is pronounced

1984.

But we aren't without examples of popular usage following the 2010 form.

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