The story begins: "It was the summer of my fifteenth year." It's written first person/female.
My question, how old was she? My guess is that Lubrican intended us to believe that she was fourteen, because you presumably begin your fifteenth year immediately following the 14th anniversary of your birth date. Therefore, she won't be 15 until her next birthday.
But, as written, I would also guess that most readers would conclude she is 15.
I agree that it could be interpreted as the summer between 14 and 15, but most people would read it as the summer following the 15th birthday.
As an editor, I'd flag it with. If I was feeling comfortable snarking with the writer, I'd query to confirm they meant the summer before she turned 15, since that's her 15th year. IOW, when I've got my editor hat on, I read persnickety literal.
My guess is that Lubrican intended us to believe that she was fourteen
That would have been my first guess too.
AJ
Want to start an argument in a crowd that has more than 10 people? Ask when the new millennium started.
when the new millennium started.
The year 2001. The first century started at year 1 and run through year 100. The second century started at year 101. It keeps going like that as centuries need 100 years and millennia (the plural of millennium, thanks to the Latin language) take 1000 years, so the first millennium ended at year 1000. The second millennium started at year 1001 and ended at the year 2000. Fortunately we don't need to discuss leap years, which pop up with some variation approximately every four years. Except sometimes in the centuries (100, 200, etc.). However the centuries evenly divisible by one hundred probably don't have 29 days in February. Unless the year is also evenly divisible by 400. And some years have leap seconds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second#:~:text=Leap%20second,-From%20Wikipedia%2C%20the.
I agree, which is why I know the question will start with a discussion and has ended with blows thrown in at least one case.
It will be interesting to see if the defenders of linguistic drift also support the 'modern' or 'common' usage of the millennium changing with the thousands digit of the year.
It's all moot anyway. as I recall (and this came up in articles a bit over two decades ago) the best estimate for the birth date of a Christlike figure was about 4BC.
