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BCE/CE or BC/AD?

Which do you use?

  • Total voters
    47
E

Ether's Bane

future Singaporean
Pronoun
he
Which do you use and why? Posting this here for us to discuss the merits and faults of each as well as mention which we use.
 
BCE/CE, because "In the xth year of the Common Era" sounds better than "In the year of our lord x". It's the fantasy fan in me.
 
I put mostly BCE/CE, because that's what I use now. I used to exclusively use BC/AD, but only because I didn't know there was another option.
 
I mostly use BC/AD because that's how I learned it, but I do use BCE/CE if the person/people I'm speaking to could possibly be offended by BC/AD.
 
AD and BC. That's just what people use, and about 90% of the people that live around me don't know what 'AD' stands for, anyway. Plus 'anno domini' sounds cool. =B

EDIT: Using Effercon's post as a jumping-off point, I'm of the opinion that if someone is offended by someone else saying 'AD' when talking or even 'Godblessyou' when they sneeze is the one who has the problem, not the speaker. :/
 
Blastoise Fortooate said:
I'm of the opinion that if someone is offended by someone else saying 'AD'
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I... can't really see this happening?

I use BCE/CE whenever I can! Occasionally there'll be times where whoever I'm talking to doesn't know what I'm talking about, in which case I'd rather explain than preemptively use BC/AD, because usually people agree that it's much better!
 
Blastoise Fortooate said:
EDIT: Using Effercon's post as a jumping-off point, I'm of the opinion that if someone is offended by someone else saying 'AD' when talking or even 'Godblessyou' when they sneeze is the one who has the problem, not the speaker. :/
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Quoted for truth. Still, I live in Malaysia, a country that is 60% Muslim, and although most of them probably wouldn't be offended, I can't see too many of them being too impressed if I used a Christianity-based term for timeline measurement, so that's when I use BCE/CE.

(By the way, that's only when speaking in English - in school, for instance, our history curriculum is all in Malay, and both translate to the same thing in Malay: Sebelum Masihi (SM) for BCE/BC and Masihi for AD/CE.)
 
I hadn't even heard of BCE/CE until right now. No surprise to which one I was taught to use!
 
I'll generally just use BCE or AD, but to be honest I rarely if ever have to use those terms... I'm more used to measuring things like "mya" or something.
 
BC/AD.

Not is it leaving less room for confusion (CE wat) it also leaves less room for hearing it wrong (Sorry was that a "B" there) and it just makes more sense. Modern era didn't start when Jesus was born, so there's no real reason to use that acronym other than PC.
 
Pwnemon said:
BC/AD.

Not is it leaving less room for confusion (CE wat) it also leaves less room for hearing it wrong (Sorry was that a "B" there) and it just makes more sense. Modern era didn't start when Jesus was born, so there's no real reason to use that acronym other than PC.
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It doesn't mean "modern era", it means "common era".
 
BC/AD out of habit, because it's what I've always used. I agree BCE is probably better, but I'm so used to BC that it sounds really pretentious, and I imagine anyone I spoke to using it would think so, too.
 
BC/AD.

I cannot imagine anyone being offended by this. But I have no problem with BCE/CE; it sounds more scientific.
 
I use BCE/CE because it's what I've always used.

Although, if someone doesn't know about BCE/CE, then I'll use BC/AD. (Which is a pretty rare occasion to me, but it happens.)
 
to be honest, I can't actually recall using either for anything. :x
 
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