The 20th century started on 1 January 1901 and ended on 31st of December 2000, according to the Gregorian calendar. Many individuals confuse the 20th century and the so-called nineteen-hundreds (1900s).

However, a number of arguments have been put forward to justify the common usage. One advanced by Stephen Jay Gould is that the first decade consisted of only nine years, thus contradicting the definition of a decade (ten years). Another argument is that the astronomical year numbering system for years does have a year zero, the year generally referred to as 1 BC. In 2000 the International Organization for Standardization clarified ISO 8601 to use the astronomical year numbering system, which could be interpreted as retroactively endorsing all those who had celebrated the new century a few months earlier. Also, decades are almost always considered as starting with the "0" year and named accordingly ("1960s", etc.).

The term is also used to describe various historical periods that overlap with the calendar definition, most notably the Short twentieth century, which describes the 20th Century as spanning from 1914 to 1989 (or sometimes up to and including 1990 or 1991), relegating the pre-World War I 1900s into the 19th Century and putting the post-Soviet 1990s at the beginning of the 21st Century.

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