Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Common Era (CE) and Before the Common Era (BCE) are year notations for the Gregorian calendar (and its predecessor, the Julian calendar), the world's most widely used calendar era. Common Era and Before the Common Era are alternatives to the original Anno Domini (AD) and Before Christ (BC) notations used for the same calendar era. The two ...
Astronomers use the Julian calendar for years before 1582, including the year 0, and the Gregorian calendar for years after 1582, as exemplified by Jacques Cassini (1740), [2] Simon Newcomb (1898) [3] and Fred Espenak (2007). [4] The prefix AD and the suffixes CE, BC or BCE (Common Era, Before Christ or Before Common Era) are dropped. [1]
BCE and CE or BC and AD are written in upper case, unspaced, without a full stop (period), and separated from the numeric year by a space (5 BC, not 5BC). It is advisable to use a non-breaking space. AD appears before or after a year (AD 106, 106 AD); BCE, CE, and BC always appear after (106 CE, 3700 BCE, 3700 BC).
The categorisation of the past into discrete, quantified named blocks of time is called periodization. [1] This is a list of such named time periods as defined in various fields of study. These can be divided broadly into prehistorical periods and historical periods (when written records began to be kept).
A calendar era is the period of time elapsed since one epoch of a calendar and, if it exists, before the next one. [1] For example, the current year is numbered 2025 in the Gregorian calendar, which numbers its years in the Western Christian era (the Coptic Orthodox and Ethiopian Orthodox churches have their own Christian eras).
[4] [5] (Modern scholars believe that the actual date of birth of Jesus was about 5 BC.) Terminology that is viewed by some as being more neutral and inclusive of non-Christian people is to call this the Common Era (abbreviated as CE), with the preceding years referred to as Before the Common Era (BCE).
The Centre for Ice and Climate at the University of Copenhagen instead uses the unambiguous "b2k", for "years before 2000 AD", often in combination with the Greenland Ice Core Chronology 2005 (GICC05) time scale. [11] Some authors who use the YBP dating format also use "YAP" ("years after present") to denote years after 1950. [12]
The Common Era is, of course, the time at which Jews and Christians began to have a shared history. See for: BCE, “Before the Common Era,” is a theologically neutral equivalent to BC, “Before Christ;” just as CE, “Common Era,” is a neutral equivalent to A.D. (anno domini), “the year of our Lord.” See for WHY BCE AND CE?