[cat_multiverse]

Great article, in my Master's and PhD despite being in a stodgy philological field I always opted for this for clarity and conciseness. It can be hard for people to let go because they want to sound clever.

But oh, dear writer, slightly irksome that you learned copyediting but do not use en-dashes for your date ranges!

[elric]

Saying stuff like "the seventeen hundreds" works in English, but it doesn't necessarily work in other languages. In Dutch that would be "de jaren zeventienhonderd", which sounds like crap compared to "de achtiende eeuw".

> because they want to sound clever

Citation needed. I've never considered "nth century" to be a product of trying to sound clever.