Does the expression "in the latter half of the 20th century " sound weird?
what im trying to say is "in the last half of the 20th century ",can I say "in the latter half of the 20th century to express the same meaning ?

Likewise, can I say "in the former half of the century " to express "in the first half of the century "?

Thanks a lot ~

Question

Does the expression "in the latter half of the 20th century " sound weird?
what im trying to say is "in the last half of the 20th century ",can I say "in the latter half of the 20th century to express the same meaning ?

Likewise, can I say "in the former half of the century " to express "in the first half of the century "?

Thanks a lot ~

Answer

"The latter half" is very good. "The former half" doesn't work in this context.

Answer

Phil is absolutely right. I just thought I'd share with you a wonderful tool you can use to look up expressions like this.

It's basically a huge (440 million word) collection of example sentences, and it's 100% free (though you have to register after using it a few times).

It takes a little time to get used to because it's not a very pretty site, but it's really worth it!

http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/

If you look up "latter half" you can see it's very commonly used when talking about centuries. If you look up "former half", you see just one example sentence (and it has nothing to do with centuries!)