Lynn User Profile

About a year after completing my service in the Army of Occupation of Germany after WWII, I became a Math Teacher. The Algebra textbook issued for my classes had an exercise question which erroneously assumed that calendar year names, e.g., 6 BC, 1666 AD, were of the same kind as the integer points on the "number line;" having a zero. Well, of course, it was several hundreds of years after the mistaken attribution of the date of birth of Jesus of Nazareth that anyone started counting calendar years from such a birth year.
And there was no year that anyone whatsoever called the "zero year." So the first century AD /C.E. ("common era") ran from the year 1 AD/CE through the year 99, not including the first day of the year 100. Remember that it would not have been called the year 100 for several centuries to come.

[b]There were two glaring faults with the word usage in the article. First, the author -- Paulette Cohn -- should have given a moments thought to the implication of the term "ninth decade." Second, there should have been an editor who knew better than to let this glaring error slip by. What was Ms. Cohn thinking? That Mr. Linkletter's first decade commenced only after he had lived ten years? Rather than at birth? Using the Common Law convention regarding attained age, Mr. Linkletter's first decade was from the day of birth through the last day of his ninth year, not including the day of his tenth birthday anniversary, which day commenced his second decade.