That 'BCE/CE' (Before Common Era/Common Era) thing really annoys me. It's a pure anti-Christian push by academics wishing not to offend anyone who might not want to date their time from the supposed date of the birth of Christ - and yet using the birth of Christ without admitting it. I can't see the point of this pretence, or of shedding a two-thousand-year-old dating tradition. And I couldn't call myself a Christian.

What I could call myself is a researcher, and I've discovered that my normal way of writing the date - April 19, 2015 - is absolutely useless for research purposes. If I'm looking, say, for a letter written in, say, June 1915, I have to search through all letters written by my subjects in 1912, because I can't find them though a search for "June 1912". I am attempting to switch the habit of years and start writing the date instead as 19 April 2015.