But then I thought about it some more and realized that they aren’t exactly the same. I wanted to share my thoughts about it and possibly get some feedback on whether or not the following applies to your understanding of these words.

At first I came to the (possibly wrong) conclusion that bullshit had a more broad application than horseshit. It could be situational as well as verbal, whereas horseshit couldn’t be.

For example, if you are angry at being forced into some situation against your will, such as having to wait in a long line, you can say “This is bullshit! I can’t believe it takes an hour to get a movie ticket.” Using horseshit here might be acceptable, but to my ears it sounds slightly unnatural.

When I think about my little brother, the difference is even clearer. My brother used to play Starcraft a lot. Sometimes something bad would happen in the game due to network latency – maybe a shuttle full of reavers gets killed because the game was slow to register his clicks. When this happened, he would slam his fist on the desk and shout, “F**king bullshit! I moved the shuttle away.”

Here, I think slamming your fist and shouting “F**king horseshit!” sounds completely unnatural. Only bullshit fits.

So is that it then? Is the difference between bullshit and horseshit that you can’t use the latter situationally? Not quite.

After some more thought, I imagined that my brother has had a minute to calm down after losing his shuttle full of reavers. He turns away from the monitor to look at me in disbelief. “Fucking horseshit. I moved that shuttle away,” he says shaking his head, inviting some sympathetic response from me. Yes, I saw you click away. It was the game/lag’s fault. Here, horseshit sounds completely natural to me.

This I think is the key. Bullshit is emphatic. You can shout it at the sky, fists shaking with rage.

Horseshit is softer. You might say it with disgust, disbelief or a dismissive tone, but you don’t scream it.

Don’t get me wrong. You can use bullshit in any situation where you use horseshit. Just not the other way around.

Do you agree? Disagree? Have something to add? Do you think this article is bullshit? Leave me a comment.

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Of course, I answered that the latter was correct. You need to add the “o” sound when the tens’ digit is a zero. He followed up, “So 804 is eight oh four, right?”

“Well, you can say that, but ‘eight hundred and four’ is also correct.”

“Can you say ‘nineteen hundred and six’?”

As the conversation went on, I began to realize that the way we read years is a little complicated. Being a native speaker of English, it comes natural to me so I’ve never thought about it. But for foreign learners it can be confusing and ambiguous. After my conversation with him I thought about it a little to see if I could find a pattern, and here is what I came up with:

Algorithm for Reading Years

1. If there there are no thousands’ or hundreds’ digits, read the number as-is. Examples:
   • 54 – “fifty-four”
   • 99 – “ninety-nine”
   • 0 – “zero”
   • 8 – “eight”
2. If there is a thousands’ digit but the hundreds’ digit is zero, you can read the number as “n thousand and x”. If the last two digits are zero, you leave off the “and x” part. Examples:
   • 1054 – “one thousand and fifty-four”
   • 2007 – “two thousand and seven”
   • 1000 – “one thousand”
   • 2000 – “two thousand”
3. If the hundreds’ digit is non-zero, you can read the number as “n hundred and x”. If the last two digits are zero, you leave off the “and x” part. Examples:
   • 433 – “four hundred and thirty-three”
   • 1492 – “fourteen hundred and ninety-two” (who sailed the ocean blue?)
   • 1200 – “twelve hundred”
   • 600 – “six hundred”
4. The above rule produces some formal and old-fashioned names. Where it exists, it is acceptable to omit “hundred and”. If you do, and the tens’ digit is zero, you must read that zero as “oh”. Examples:
   • 432 – “four thirty-two”
   • 1492 – “fourteen ninety-two”
   • 1908 – “nineteen oh eight”
   • 1106 – “eleven oh six”
5. Finally, though uncommon it is possible to read the years in rule #2 using the systems for rules #3 and #4. Examples:
   • 1054 – “ten hundred and fifty-four” (if this sounds wrong to you, imagine you are watching a documentary on the history channel and the stiff narrator begins: “In the year ten hundred and fifty-four, Pope Leo IX died.”)
   • 1054 – “ten fifty-four”
   • 3026 – “thirty twenty-six”
   • 2007 – “twenty oh seven” (if this sounds wrong to you, imagine you live in 1972 and you are reading a science fiction story that starts: “In the year twenty oh seven, the world was overrun by blood-thirsty robots.”)

By writing it out I don’t think I made it any less-complicated, but for what it’s worth there it is.

Does this algorithm work for you? I think I covered all the bases, but let me know in the comments if I missed something.

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