On Wed, 9 Oct 2002, Jeroen Heijmans wrote:
What *is* our convention on BC / BCE and AD / CE?
On the en: wiki, the year, century, etc pages are called "BC", but I think a majority of articles use "BCE". I bumped into an article specifically about the naming system, which states that "BCE" and "CE" are now preferred, in general.
perhaps we should take our own advice?
I think we should give preference to the BC/AD system. Before I found Wikipedia, I had never heard of the other convention, and I think BC/AD is still the most used and best known system - the best reason for preferring it over the other.
I agree that it's the best known system, however most modern works use BCE/CE and that's what I was taught at school.
I tend to use whatever is appropriate for the article in question, for instance articles related to the Christian world use AD/BC, those related to Arab world I've used the AH calender with CE/BCE date in brackets, etc.
Imran