In an Ancient Burial Place, 3 Centuries of One Woman’s Descendants | Hacker News Reader

In an Ancient Burial Place, 3 Centuries of One Woman’s Descendants

nytimes.com

26 pointsdiodorus14 comments

> 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.

Please 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.

Obviously 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).

How do you think language, spelling, and punctuation evolve over time?

Many 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.

> 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.h...

From 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.

Just 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.)

Ah, 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).

I'm sure the NYT has a style guide they use to determine such usage, which may be counter to what you're used to.

In typical conversation people will say "800 A.D.", so I think you're wrong.

Never change, HN.

That's not fair to this community. The overwhelming majority neither post nor think like this.

That was tongue-in-cheek

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