Ad

Usage

Traditionally, English follows Latin usage by placing the "AD" abbreviation before the year number, though it is also found after the year. In contrast, "BC" is always placed after the year number (for example: 70 BC but AD 70), which preserves syntactic order. The abbreviation "AD" is also widely used after the number of a century or millennium, as in "fourth century AD" or "second millennium AD" (although conservative usage formerly rejected such expressions). Since "BC" is the English abbreviation for Before Christ, it is sometimes incorrectly concluded that AD means After Death (i.e., after the death of Jesus; but that would mean that the approximately 33 years commonly associated with the life of Jesus would be included in neither BC nor AD).