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In an Ancient Burial Place, 3 Centuries of One Woman’s Descendants
- zeveb 10y ago> between 800 and 1130 A.D. That should be 'between A.D. 800 and 1130.' It's pretty sad when even the New York Times gets such a simple thing wrong.
- dragonwriter 10y agoMany style guides either prefer positioning "A.D." after dates or accept both before and after positions. Not following your preferred style on this point is not getting it wrong.
- zeveb 10y ago> Many style guides either prefer positioning "A.D." after dates or accept both before and after positions. Then they're wrong. It's a Latin abbreviation, and correct Latin is written 'anno Domini 2017,' not '2017 anno domini.' The NYT agreed back in 1997: http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/17/magazine/bc-ad-or-bce-ce.html http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/17/magazine/bc-ad-or-bce-ce.h...
- mturmon 10y agoFrom the Nature paper: "Here we use an archaeogenomic approach to identify an elite matriline that persisted between 800 and 1130 CE in Chaco Canyon, the centre of an expansive prehistoric complex society in the Southwestern United States." TRWTF is translating the original CE into A.D.
- cgriswald 10y agoJust as the choice to put AD before or after is a style issue, the choice to use AD or CE is essentially a style issue since the two systems are numerically equivalent. They probably feel that more of their readers prefer or understand AD than CE. (TRWTFs are the lack of a year zero and counting backwards sometimes and forwards other times.)
- xyzzy4 10y agoIn typical conversation people will say "800 A.D.", so I think you're wrong.
- paulddraper 10y agoNever change, HN.
- dang 10y agoThat's not fair to this community. The overwhelming majority neither post nor think like this.
- paulddraper 10y agoThat was tongue-in-cheek
- dogecoinbase 10y agoAh, partial pedantry. All of Merriam-Webster, the OED, and the Chicago Manual of Style specify that all of BC, AD, CE, and BCE are written in capitals without punctuation (M-W does list both small caps and punctuation as variants -- the OED only lists small caps).
- dang 10y agoPlease don't post unsubstantive comments to HN. I'm pretty sure the NYT have punctilious policies down to the nth degree about this stuff, but even if they don't it doesn't matter. Comments here should focus on the substance of an article, not one-up a newspaper's punctuation.
- zeveb 10y agoObviously I thought it was substantive (I still do), as another example of the traditional media getting sloppier & sloppier as its margins have eroded due to Internet competition (which, to be fair, started out sloppier and isn't necessarily getting better). I think it's relevant, because we're at a point where the profession of journalism is severely resource-starved. No, it's not relevant to the topic of a pueblo burial, any more than a Bloomberg article's broken JavaScript or autoplaying video is relevant to the article's topic, but I contend that it's relevant to HN, and I had hoped it might spark some discussion on how to improve online journalism (unfortunately all it sparked was some folks defending the error, but that's life).
- drdeadringer 10y agoHow do you think language, spelling, and punctuation evolve over time?
- grzm 10y agoI'm sure the NYT has a style guide they use to determine such usage, which may be counter to what you're used to.
- grzm 10y agoI'm sure the NYT had a style guide they use to determine such usage, which may be counter to what you're used to.