Talk:century

Never a proper noun

# Usage notes

Neither the word century itself nor phrases like the twentieth century are proper nouns. Therefore "in the twentieth century", "in the 20th century", and the like should be written with lowercase letters, except in contexts (like book titles) where even common nouns are capitalized.

Well, that's patently false. Did the original editor intend to say something like "usually", "in most style guides", or "in present usage"? — LlywelynII 09:37, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

The usage note in question seems to have gone by now. But I must ask: How could it have been "patently false"? The only claim that was made was that "the twentieth century" is not a proper noun. And that, I believe, is correct or at least arguable. Otherwise, the author gave style advice ("should"), which cannot be wrong because it is based, largely, on personal taste. Of course, we try to avoid such forms of advice on wiktionary and replace them with frequency analyses.