When writing twentieth century using an ordinal numeral, should the th part be in superscript? 20th century 20th century
(From the 40s through the 80s, for example.) "Later" often implies that it started after the half, and lasted much closer to the end. Rock and roll, jazz, and techno were music of the latter part of the 20th century. Techno was music of the later part of 20th century. The distinction is somewhat pedantic, even if useful.
"The later part of the 20th century" vs. "the latter part of the 20th ...
I suspect it was a term coined sometime during the 20th century to mean the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. As someone born mid-twentieth, it seems always to have been around. However now we are well into the twenty-first century an element of confusion has arisen. Often the meaning can be picked up from context e.g. "my son was born around the turn of the century" would be unlikely to ...
Prior to the 20th century, extraterrestrial life was referred to in fairly plain terms. For instance, in an 1803 English translation of the French book Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds by Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (1686), inhabitant is the most common term used, e.g.: The posterity of Adam cannot have colonized the moon; therefore the inhabitants of that planet are not ...
century | 1 The 1900s are the 20th century AD, of which the last year will be the year 2000. Similarly the period 1801 – 1900 inclusive was the 19th century, 1301 – 1400 was the 14th century, and so on.