ISO8601 / RFC3339 gang represent. You’ll have to take four digit years from my cold, dead hands.

You can now If you want. Who cares?

Back in 21

You can totally start now. Although, and maybe this is just a me thing, I’d feel like a massive bellend if I referred to something that happened in, for instance, 2021 as “in '21”.

I think I’d feel okay with “'01”, through to “'09”, then the teens feel weird again but only because it just feels weird to refer to a year as small as like… “'13”… although I don’t have that same problem with the naughties, maybe that’s because of the added “oh” making it seem like more than just a number? And then the twenties feel like big enough numbers to abbreviate but, yeah, again, I’d feel like a tool.

You could do it since 00

In the English-speaking world, you can always shorten the year from 4 to 2 digits. But whether: 1) this causes confusion or 2) do you/anyone care if it does, are the points of contention. The first is context-dependent: if a customer service agent over the phone is trying to confirm your date of birth, there’s no real security issue if you only say the 2 digit year, because other info would have to match as well.

If instead you are presenting ID as proof of age to buy alcohol, there’s a massive difference between 2010 and 1910. An ID card and equivalent documentation must use a four digit year, when there is no other available indicator of the century.

For casual use, like signing your name and date on a holiday card, the ambiguity of the century is basically negligible, since a card like that is enjoyed at the time that it’s read, and isn’t typically stashed away as a 100-year old memento.

That said, I personally find that in spoken and written English, the inconvenience of the 4 digit year is outweighed by the benefit of properly communicating with non-American English users. This is because us American speak and write the date in a non-intuitive fashion, which is an avoidable point of confusion.

Typical Americans might write “7/1/25” and say “July first, twenty five”. British folks might read that as 7 January, or (incorrectly) 25 January 2007. But then for the special holiday of “7/4/25”, Americans optionally might say “fourth of July, twenty five”. This is slightly less confusing, but a plausible mishearing by the British over a scratchy long-distance telephone call would be “before July 25”, which is just wrong.

The confusion is minimized by a full 4 digit year, which would leave only the whole day/month ordering as ambiguous. That is, “7/1/2025” or “1/7/2025”.

Though I personally prefer RFC3339 dates, which are strictly YYYY-mm-dd, using 4 digit years, 2 digit months, and 2 digit days. This is always unambiguous, and I sign all paperwork like this, unless it explicitly wants a specific format for the date.

You can now …it’s the 20s

After 2100 should we start using three digits?

Depends on the language honestly. In my native language (that’s not English) it sounds somewhat clumsy with the zero in front, but it’s still sometimes used. Depending on the context it might be a simple number (zero two) or it might be an ordinal (zero second). From 2010 and on it’s been easier because you just say the equivalent of “tenth”, “eleventh” and so on.

In writing it also depends on the context - if it’s something ambiguous (that could be 1925 or 2025), then sure, write the full year, otherwise two digits are fine.

I’ve found myself using just 2 numbers for the years after 2020

I started this year, and I think you can refer to years as far back as '22 without it feeling awkward.

Considering my kids already refer to pre millennial days as the ancient 19’s, you can already do it with the younger crowd.

I belive that change will come when both of us are dead. To me the 20s still mean 1920.

I hope never so we never have Y2K again

Maybe 20 will be a better year than 20, and people will start shorting it to 20 instead of 20. /j