[General] Problem with dates

[duciame]

I have been looking for rules applying to reading dates like 150 AD but I haven't found reliable information.The only rules I can find are about typical (current) dates. I would be very grateful for any help.

 

[teechar]

Have a look at this:
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/dates?q=Dates

 

[MikeNewYork]

You would read 150 AD as one fifty AD.

 

[emsr2d2]

I'd read it aloud as "a hundred and fifty A D" or "one hundred and fifty A D".

I still can't get used to "CE" - for the life of me, I can never remember whether it's meant to be a replacement for BC or AD.

 

[Rover_KE]

Whoever devised BCE and CE didn't think it through very well.

I always think of them as 'Before the Christian Era' and 'Christian Era' which defeats the object of the neologism.

 

[Raymott]

Given that the calendar has to start somewhere, what historical event should be used? I'm at a loss.

 

[MikeNewYork]

I have never used CE or BCE and I doubt I ever will.

 

[Rover_KE]

Neither will I, and that's our privilege, but students need to know that they exist.

 

[SoothingDave]

I have no objection to this year being numbered 2016. As you say, we have to start somewhere, and the birth of a man revered for centuries in the countries which use this system is as good a place as anywhere, particularly as it is so well established. However, in the current world, one in which Christians are a minority group, albeit a very large and influential one, I am not happy about AD and, now that I have started to think about it, CE also has problems. Perhaps the easiest thing of all would be to use plus and minus signs. Thus 55 BC(E) becomes -55, and 1453 AD/CE becomes +1453. As with AD/CE the plus sign could be dropped unless considered necessary. We'd soon become used to, for example, The Romans left Britain in the +5th century.

That just introduces more potential for confusion. And it doesn't remove the "problem" of being based on a reckoning of the time of Christ's birth.

I'm of the "it is what it is" school. Until we can agree on some more momentous thing to mark the start of our numbering, we will use what we have. And I don't see that happening anytime soon.