If my whole paper only deals with dates after Christ, should I omit AD everywhere? If not, is there a rule for when I should and should not use AD? Writting “2017 AD” feels a little silly to me.
1 Answer
The Chicago Manual of Style (which you reference in a tag) doesn't seem to have anything to say about this, or I couldn't find it.
My rules of thumb would be:
Be consistent.
If you use AD/BC for most of your dates, use it for all dates.
Omit AD if it is clear from the context that none of the dates can be BC.
For example, if you paper is about Medieval England, maybe use AD once when you define the Medieval English period at the beginning of your paper, then omit AD in all dates.
The second rule of thumb is overruled by conventions in your field or the journal you publish in.
If in your field or with your publisher it is the convention to use AD even if it is clear from the context that you are only dealing with dates after the birth of Christ, do so too.
For European history, a limit, if there is one, seems to be the year 1000.
I often see 600 AD, but never (to my knowledge, in modern scholarly texts) 1240 AD. This may have to do with the fact that recorded history stops somewhere before 1000 BC for Europe (Herodotus, one of the earliest historians, lived in the 5th century BC), so that exact dates (like 1240) cannot be confused (as we commonly don't have exact dates before 1000 BC for European history), only centuries (11th century AD/BC) can be ambivalent. The case would be different for Egypt or China, where recorded history reaches farther back and where it might make sense to write something like 2017 BC.
I certainly wouldn't use AD for dates in the modern (after 1500) or enlightened (after 1700) age. So:
Some bulding was built in 354 BC and last renovated in 1864.
