Board Thread:Wiki discussion/@comment-18014300-20180717074641/@comment-18014300-20180725040548

For the minority here or on our Discord server who felt that floruit was too technical, or obscure, or jargonic (I just made up that word) because it is a term that had to be looked up, one thing I always wanted to point out is just that I don't think it is any more advanced than c. (circa), a similar notation used to mean "approximately". No one has ever had a problem using circa which is the standard way of clarifying that a date given is approximate, and floruit is used in the exact same way to give a different clarification to a date. At one point in my life, I had to look up the terms BCE and CE, having only been taught BC and AD at school. At another point, I had to look up the term circa when encountering it for the very first time. At another point, I had to look up the term floruit.

I don't think it is fair to say that just because one hasn't heard of a vocabulary word, that vocabulary word must necessarily be too technical or that it makes something too inaccesible for readers. The way readers expand their vocabulary and literacy level in the first place is because they read and encounter works which employ words formerly unfamiliar to them and are thereby prompted to look them up.