Re: Turn of the century, millennium, etc

["Huber, Mike" <Mike -dot- Huber -at- SOFTWARE -dot- ROCKWELL -dot- COM>]

I would not use (without specifically defining what I meant by it,
no matter how authoritative my reference) a term such as
"century" in a technical document. In the unlikely event that I
had to refer to century, it would look like this:
..
The *Century* field contains the century (for example, a record
stored on 1-1-2001 would have *21* as it's century, while one
stored on 12-31-2000 would have *20*.) in which the
record was stored.
..
This is a place where online documentation has a big advantage,
since the definition would be a popup, instead of a honking big
parenthetical.

This is also not the most likely case - most software that has
a century field will just store the first two digits of the year, and
the parenthetical remark might have to be written to placate
those for whom the 20'th century ends with 12-31-2000.

 ----------
From:  David Fisher[SMTP:DAF -dot- DSKPO27B -at- dskbgw1 -dot- itg -dot- ti -dot- com]
Sent:  Monday, January 29, 1996 1:14 PM
To:  Multiple recipients of list TEC
Subject:  Turn of the century, millenium, etc.

In technical documentation do you refer to the turn of the century at
Jan. 1,
2000 or Jan. 1, 2001? If the first year A.D. was 1, then it follows that
the
first year of the 21st century will be 2001. Many pundits are touting the
year
2000 because with all those zeroes it must be important, but what is
correct?

Just wondering,

David Fisher
dfisher2 -at- ti -dot- com