On the other hand, most buildings refer to the ground floor as floor 1. Once you do that, you have an awkward decision to make about what to call the floors below ground. It doesn't make sense to have floor 0 underground, and calling the first basement floor -1 would mean skipping floor 0. That's why we use letters such as G, L, B, B1, B2, etc., and why there's no standard.

One of the few situations where we start counting from 0 is with a 24-hour clock. Having the clock go from 1:00 to 24:59 would have the advantage that the 1st hour of the day starts from 1:00, the 2nd hour starts from 2:00, etc. But we can probably agree that it makes much more sense to go from 0:00 to 23:59.

At the same time, look how slow the U.S. has been to adopt the 24-hour clock. For God's sake, we still call it military time, when really the 12-hour clock should be called idiot time. How many people get confused by what "midnight on Friday" means?

Yes, people are very resistant to counting from 0. That's why the Gregorian calendar started from 1 A.D.

Tuck continued again. "When it comes to time, counting from 1 is tempting but deadly. By leaving year 0 out of the Gregorian calendar, they were setting people up for confusion down the road when we would inevitably debate when the new millennium would officially begin."

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