Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers/Archive 3

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Standard in U.S. (majority of current audience)

If our audience is English speakers, which was my impression, then the US. is not the majority of the current audience. Am I misunderstanding something?

When they say "current audience", they presumably mean "current readership" rather than "intended audience". Understood that way, the argument is less strong. AxelBoldt 21:17 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC)
Ok, do we have stats on what proportion of the current readership is US? Martin

I'm chipping in late here, but here's my opinion: we should keep the current standard of Month Day, Year, and edit anything that is in some other form to match that form. In other words, we should continue as we are. Any change is not worth the hassle it will cause, and I honestly don't see what the benefits are. I'm not convinced that the Month Day, Year format is only standard in the US - I just looked at two very different UK newspapers (The Sun and The Guardian) and both give today's date as "March 3 2003". --Camembert

That's a good point. Guardian articles also use month/day, from a quick sample of a few of their pages, so it's not just their header. Well there you go, we started off this debate being surprised at US style guides supporting "international" usage, and now we find some UK newspapers supporting "American" usage. (I note that the daily telegraph is sticking to day/month, though... ;-) Martin

From the Guardian style guide:

January 1 2000 (no commas)
It is occasionally alleged that putting month before date in this way is an "Americanisation"; in which case it should be pointed out that this has been our style since the first issue of the Manchester Guardian on May 5 1821

...and similarly the Times style guide:

dates Monday, April 18, 1994 (never 18th April)

--rbrwr

Newspapers generally use the same standard date format, largely to do with their filing system for past editions, in which previously newspapers were bound together by month, not date. For the ease of staff engaged in filing large piles of newspapers in the days before papers were microfilmed and when the work was done in poor lighting in old buildings, it was long ago decided that most British and Irish newspapers would place the keyword first, which in the case of filing was the month. (A small number of newspapers, notably the Daily Telegraph refused to follow that rule, even if it caused more eyestrain for their unfortunate library staff, on the basis that it did not want to look like it was copying the US.) Newspaper dating of no relevance whatsoever to this debate. We don't use newspaper fonts, newspaper layout, newspaper graphics or anything. Their dating system is irrelevent and does not in any case mean that their readers followed that system, because they didn't.

It is an unambiguous fact that most of the world uses dd/mm/yy, not mm/dd/yy. Even computers change dating systems depending on where in the world the computer is used. On my computer only one country in the world is shown as mm/dd/yy, the US. (More show up as yy/mm/dd (2) than mm/dd/yy (1).) Dates are written as dd/mm/yy and spoken as the second of March, not March 2. JtdIrL 01:39 Mar 4, 2003 (UTC)

So why didn't they file by year first? lysdexia 02:02, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
But remember, we are talking about Month, not mm. 01/04/03 is ambiguous, but January 4, 2003 is understandable by all English speakers. There is no significant difference between the understandability of 4 January 2003 and January 4, 2003, and clarity is our main goal. (And I don't think anybody is suggesting we use 4th January 2003 or 4th of January 2003 or January the 4th, 2003, so how it is spoken is not really relevant.) Nanobug 12:57 29 May 2003 (UTC)


I'm looking at the "Encourage [[Day Month]] [[Year]]" option and the "Keep [[Month Day]] standard, allow both [[Month Day]], [[Year]] and [[Day Month]] [[Year]] in entries, preferring format appropriate to majority editor/readership" option. Are these supposed to be parallel? If so, should this be made more clear? If not, where are their parallel opposites? (I'm hoping so.) -- Toby 07:14 Mar 4, 2003 (UTC)

I originally created parallel "Encourage" options, but nobody (except, briefly, Tannin) voted for "Encourage Month Day", so I scrapped that option. The "Keep Month Day standard, allow..." was created by The Cunctator. I guess the options are pretty much parallel, though more by accident than design... Martin

So "Encourage ..." is a vote to change (or not change) only the article titles, but to have no MoS policy for article text? -- Toby 11:17 Mar 8, 2003 (UTC)

That's how I would interpret it. Martin

In my quest for issues on which we actually agree, I'd like to add something along the following lines to the article:

  • Avoid using multiple date formats in the same article - this can confuse readers.

I know that Tannin would disagree with this idea, idea, but would peoplewould support consistency within individual articles, even if consistency across the whole of wikipedia is more controversial? Thanks. Martin

Providing that the month was spelled out, I doubt that it would confuse readers, although it might annoy some of the more pedantic, but I would be quite happy to make dates consistent within individual articles and probably have done so in the past. -- Derek Ross
No, that's OK with me, Martin. In general, it is poor style to mix and match within an individual entry. It's only when you hit complex passages where you need to mention four or five dates in a single para that we need to allow a little extra slack. Tannin
Could you give some examples? Martin