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Originally Posted by GioforPM
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2021-2030 would be the 203rd decade A.D., but nobody uses ordinal numbers for decades.
2020-2029 is the decade of the 2020s, which is defined by having year numbers beginning with 202. (1990 was not part of the 1980s, even if the Oilers did win the Stanley Cup that year.)
In the same way, 2000 was the last year of the 20th century but the first year of the century of the 2000s. Most people in the English-speaking countries do use ordinal numbers for centuries, so the first way is appropriate.
The keen observer will have noticed that this means one decade out of ten is actually divided between two centuries. This is illogical, but so what? Nothing about the Gregorian calendar is logical, from ‘Thirty days hath September’ down to buying new calendars every year because the years start on different days of the week.
Just thank your lucky stars that we aren't still using the Julian calendar, in which New Year's Day was March 25. That's right, the day after March 24, 1520, was March 25, 1521. If people in the Middle Ages could cope with that, you can cope with a little sloppiness about numbering the decades.