Numbers game
YES, IT'S 2006--do you know how you're going to pronounce it? In last week's column, we mentioned just two ways to say the number: There's two thousand and six, the more popular version, and twenty-oh-six, favored by a vocal minority that includes CBS's Charles Osgood.
But the new year had barely taken its first baby steps when readers began to object. One correspondent e-mailed that she was taught never to insert the and when pronouncing numbers and dates like 2006. It's not two thousand and six, she said, but just two thousand six.
Another had learned in math class that ''O is a letter, zero is a number," and that and had no place in numbers: 101 is one hundred one, 432 is four hundred thirty-two, and 2006 is ''two thousand six--no ohs, no ands."
One of these quibbles I too heard in school, from teachers infused with the spirit of Will Strunk's war cry, ''Omit needless words!" It was more elegant, they said, to drop the and, especially in writing numbers. But I don't think they went so far as to label the and incorrect in spoken language; all around us, after all, were respectable adults saying things like ''a hundred and forty-nine," not to mention ''a hunnert 'n' forty-nine."
None of these teachers, I'll bet, had any idea that their anti-and sentiment was a strictly American prejudice. In Britain, two thousand and six is the normal way to say the year; it's our lean, mean two thousand six that sounds weird and wrong.
And the Strunkian minimalists have no monopoly on strong feelings about the issue. Here's how one Australian sports fan responded, in a recent posting on a broadcaster's online message board, when he heard a famous soccer commentator slip into the American style:
''I do not believe my ears. I think I heard Les Murray just say 'two thousand five' and 'two thousand six' when he obviously meant to say 'two thousand and five' and 'two thousand and six.' This is Australia, not the USA. If this poisonous infiltration of American-speak is going to infect the only decent TV station left to us, then I just give up."
Pure English or poisonous infiltration? It depends on where you're coming from. For more examples of such differences, see Wikipedia's entry on ''Naming numbers in English" (http://en.wikipedia.org)--but, as always, read skeptically: One of the authors believes that ''in American English, it is non-standard to use the word and before tens and ones." As your ear will tell you, Americans do use and, especially in speech, where ''thirty thousand and five" comes across more clearly than ''thirty thousand five."
But is it elegant? Let's ask America's etiquette gurus. On formal wedding announcements, where the years are spelled out, Miss Manners chooses the two thousand and six form; Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Book of Etiquette allows ''Nineteen hundred and ninety-five" or ''One thousand nine hundred and ninety-five," but she keeps the and, either way.
And as for that oh in twenty-oh-six: When in math class, do as the math teacher asks. But even math teachers don't live at two-zero-seven Maple Street: Like most Americans, they say two-oh-seven. Zero was called oh at least 500 years ago, well before Shakespeare played on the zero-O resemblance: ''Thou art an O without a figure ... I am a fool, thou art nothing." From ''Lear" to Bonne Bell Ten-O-Six lotion to James Bond, ''agent double-oh-seven," oh for zero has always been OK. Avoid it if you please, but like and in the year, it's merely a matter of taste.
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GET IT WHILE YOU CAN: The new six-part BBC word program, ''Balderdash and Piffle," may or may not come to US television. But while it's airing over there, Web users everywhere can enjoy a truly cool freebie: online access to the Oxford English Dictionary, normally $295 a year. After each Monday segment, the OED will be available to all for 48 hours. And all week long, you can search for words that start with the featured letters (last week's was P). Go to www.oed.com/bbcwords to sign up for an e-mail reminder or to check out the life stories of parameter, penultimate, and (of course!) pernickety.
E-mail freeman@globe.com.
