Names for the number 0 in English call the first decade of the 21st century, as "00s" is not usually pronounced as a word. Apart from side stepping the issue and calling the decade the "two-thousands" (2000s) there is no agreed wording, although in Britain and some other countries "noughties" was also used. There is a need to maintain an explicit distinction between digit zero and letter O, which, because they are both usually represented graphically in English orthography (and indeed most orthographies using Latin script and Arabic numerals) with a simple circle or oval, have a centuries-long history of being frequently conflated. However, in spoken English,
Names for the number 0 in English "a nought" and "a naught" have been misheard as "an ought" and "an aught". Samuel Johnson thought that since "aught" was generally used for "anything" in preference to "ought", so also "naught" should be used for "nothing" in preference to "nought". However, he observed that "custom has irreversibly prevailed in using 'naught' for 'bad' and 'nought' for 'nothing'". Whilst this distinction existed in his time, in modern English, as observed by Fowler and The Reader's Digest above, it does not exist today. However, the sense of "naught" meaning "bad" is still preserved in the word "naughty", which is simply the