2023. EVERY CALENDAR NOW gives us this number. Few would think twice about what it means, but a sorry — and stupid — situation has emerged. It is now frowned upon, in the great majority of our educational and political institutions to give this year its due. Talk of “AD 2023” will furrow brows; the proper behaviour is to intone the sanitised nonsense of “ce”. And whatever academics feel on the issue, their university and publication “style guides” will impose the nouveau régime.
Of those who have noticed the rapid erosion of AD, and in turn BC, across the Anglophone world in the last two decades many suppose the change to be simply an “inclusive” practice, or just a