Fans of the
Star Wars fictional universe keep track of the
dates of key events with a dating system (or calendar) reckoned at the
Battle of Yavin featured in
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. In this dating system, BBY stands for Before the Battle of Yavin, and ABY stands for After the Battle of Yavin, so 50 BBY comes before 5 ABY, as with
BC and
AD. Occasionally, the defeat of the Empire at the
Battle of Endor (four years after Yavin) has been used as an alternate starting year, but has generally been phased out in favor of the current standard system. When
Bantam Spectra held the license for Star Wars novels, they described their books as after Endor, but
Del Rey, the current license-holder, exclusively uses ABY.
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