Template:Date missing/doc

This is a documentation subpage for Template:Date missing.
It may contain usage information, categories and other content that is not part of the original template page.

This template is an in-line request for the date that a source was published. For the date an event occurred use {{date needed}}.

{{Date missing}} (or {{date?}} for short) is an inline cleanup template flagging a broken source citation that is missing the date of publication of the cited source (or at least the specified fact that date is not available). "Date" here usually means "more information than just the year".

Use this template sparingly: It should only be placed in citation templates that are missing a date but should have one because the source cited is not properly identified without it. For example, most books and non-news Web pages are only published with a year as the publication date, and should not be tagged with this template. (See {{year?}} for missing publication years).

For newspapers articles, online news site articles, blogs, and other publications that provide full dates, the dates are usually given in citation templates in the form D[D] Monthname YYYY(international format) or, for articles in American English, Monthname D[D], YYYY (US format). For magazines, journals and other sources that usually just

Usage

With references in a {{Cite}}-type template ({{Cite web}}, {{Cite book}}, {{Citation}}, etc.):
|date={{date?|{{subst:DATE}}}}
With a free-form reference citation, just append {{date?|{{subst:DATE}}}} to the end of the citation.

If you're really lazy, you can omit the optional date parameter stuff: {{date?}}

If you're weird, you can do the date manually: {{date?|date=May 2025}}

How to fix the problem flagged by this template

Do not remove the template without fixing the problem one of the following ways.

If you know the date (or date range in some cases), fill in the needed information, and remove the template.
For a template-formatted citation, there are three basic ways to do this:
1. International format (for most articles), full format (usually for news items):
  |date=D[D] Monthname YYYY
2. US format (for articles in American English), full format (usually for news items):
  |date=Monthname D[D], YYYY
3. Month and year only (usually for magazines and journals)
  |date=Monthname YYYY
4. Or, if just a year would be more appropriate (e.g. for books an non-news websites), specify it using |year=:
  |year=YYYY
5. Some publications use some other kind of date range, such as a season or whatever:
  |date=Winter 2009/2010
  
  |date=March/April, 2010
  
  |date=1st Quarter, 2010
For a free-form citation:
1. Just add the date, as appropriate to the format of the citation
2. Better yet, convert the entire citation to {{Cite journal}}, {{Cite news}} or some other {{Cite}}-series template, as appropriate for the work in question.

If you know that no date was specified by the original source, as is common on many web pages, you have several options, listed here in order of preference.
1. Use the copyright year (or year range) if one is specified, and use [square brackets] to specify that this is what it is:
  |year=2006–2010 [copyright date]
  
  If the template will break without using the |date= parameter, then go ahead:
  
  |date=2006–2010 [copyright date]
2. Failing that, use the date from the page's last-modified date (use your browser's "get page info" type of command; for example it is "Tools > Page info" in Firefox on Windows); only use this date if it is plausible (many sites always show a very recent last-modified date because of dynamic content updating such as sidebar ads).
  |date=23 March 2003 [last updated]
  
  Use the format appropriate for the article and source/citation type.
3. Another option is an estimation, if you have reason to know approximately when something was publisher (i.e., you are more than guessing):
  |year=ca. September 15, 2009
4. Finally, explicitly state that the year was unspecified if none of the above are practical (it will appear inside parentheses in most templates, but if it does not it should probably be put in [square brackets]):
  |date=date unspecified
  
  or
  
  |date=[date unspecified]
For free-form citations:
No date specified.

Do not use question marks.

Do not continue to leave it blank, or someone else will just come along later and flag this with {{date?}} again!

Do not use |date=none, |date=unknown or anything else vague; any implication that the source itself did not specify is simply a signal to other editors to re-tag it with {{date?}}.

If you don't know:
1. Check the source
2. Add the necessary information, as above.
If the source is a dead link, check archive.org for a backup copy (see your {{Citation}}/{{Cite}}-type template's documentation for use of |archiveurl= and |archivedate= parameters). If no archive copy is available, use {{dead link}} after the citation, but leave {{date?}} as well.

Usage

How to fix the problem flagged by this template

See also