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Tuesday, May 3, 2016

From Baby Boomers to Millennials

I keep reading about Generation X and millennials as generations that follow my generation of baby boomers. But I haven't been sure what years they cover. So I did a bit of web searching. I added entries of what I found out to Garbl's Editorial Style and Usage Manual.

Some demographers, historians and commentators narrow the birth years and then try to describe the interests of people within each generation. My style manual entries don't dabble with that interest stuff.

baby boomer Two words, no hyphen, lowercase. The post-World War II population surge, or baby boom, ran from 1946 to 1964. The terms, though not the people they refer to, are approaching triteness. 

Generation X Capitalized. The generation born after the baby boomers (1946 to 1964). Generation X spans birth dates ranging from the early 1960s to the early 1980s. Gen X is acceptable on second reference. Members of this generation are Gen Xers

millennials Members of the generation following Generation X (early 1960s to early 1980s). Millennials have birthdates ranging from the early 1980s to the early 2000s. Also known as Generation Y. There doesn't seem to be a widely used term for the next generation (the early 2000s onward), though Generation Z has its adherents. 


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