Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers/Archive 38

Centuries

Spelling out of centuries vs Arabic numerals.

Having trawled through the entire talk archive I have come up with the following

Don't use Roman numerals "XI century".

A few (maybe four) people expressed a preference one way or the other.

One style guide recommends spelling out.

The Guardian style guides recommend spelling out first - ninth following their newspaperish take on numbers.

I suggest rewording the MoS to at least allow spelling out centuries on an equal footing with Arabic numberals. Rich Farmbrough. 22:46, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

I could not find anything in the MoS that forbids it. Can you? bobblewik 16:57, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, sure, spelling out is on an equal footing with Arabic numerals (though not Roman numerals), why not. Neonumbers 11:24, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

The 'Numbers in words' section appears to cover it. bobblewik 11:46, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Location of birth

I apologize if this has been previously covered, but I'm not going to read through 36 pages of archives and I don't know how to search just the archives. Currently, in section 1.3 Dates of birth and death, there is a statement saying, "Locations should be included in the biography portion of the body article." I see many, many articles where this is not the case, and I've cleaned up many, many articles to move the location from the date area to the body of the article per the current style guide. I'd like to propose that the style guide be changed to allow locations in the date area. Many times, it does not seem appropriate to have a sentence in the body just to say where someone was born if it isn't relative to the rest of the article. Thoughts? If this has already been discussed and decided, please direct me to the appropriate discussion area and I'll happily be on my way. Lbbzman 18:37, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

ISO 8601

What advantages does the ISO format have over spelling out the month? If the month is written out, the date is shown exactly as pronounced, albeit perhaps in a different order. There can be no confusion. Using a number for the month can be harder to read for someone not used to it, and some particularly clueless non-Americans (hah! I get to refer to a subset of non-Americans as being stupid for once!) may mistake the month as the day. What advantages does it offer? All I can see is that it's very handy for computer storage, since alphabetizing will automatically put everything in the correct date order, but that's hardly relevant, is it? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:35, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Okay, they're also useful for people who don't know the English month names. Given that most other major languages have very similar month names anyway, I don't view that as an issue either. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:39, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Everyone that can read English can, or can be assumed to (i.e. should be able to), recognise the month names. This is, after all, an English encyclopedia, presumably for English speakers.

Because there is no such date format as YYYY-DD-MM, it is highly unlikely that anyone would mistake the day for the month. Except for America, the order is always in order of precision/magnitude/length (don't know how to describe it). Only the American system is out-of-order. (Sorry, I just had to retort that non-American comment :P)

But anyway, I personally see no advantages (in fact, the opposite) and am happy to see it go. Unless they use it in tables or somethign like that. I suspect there's a few who disagree. Neonumbers 11:29, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I do not quite understand what is being asked. Is it:

1. Why does ISO 8601 exist?

2. Should the MoS refer to ISO 8601?

3. Should the MoS section on ISO 8601 be improved?

bobblewik 11:53, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I think it's "should the editor be allowed to type ISO 8601 dates". The ISO format is quicker to type, and it's converted by date preferences so it shouldn't matter. However, I never use it because I'm told anonymous users and new users have the date preference "don't convert anything". I wish they had a default of either February 10 or 10 February — I don't care which. Maybe that way we wouldn't get so many edits "correcting" the date from one to the other. Stephen Turner (Talk) 11:55, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Ah. If forbidding use of ISO 8601 is the question, I would not vote for that constraint. The section does not add much value but I worry that removing it might lead to editors claiming that format is not permitted. If my worry is unjustified, then it could be removed. Otherwise it could be improved. Wikipedia is almost unique (even on the web) in being a specifically international resource so internationalisation is a good thing for us. I definitely think ISO 8601 should be permitted, even if the option is hardly ever used. Like you, I am also a non-user of date preferences but don't tempt me into debating that whole issue here! bobblewik 12:45, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

The English Wikipedia should be maximally comprehensible to English speakers. ISO 8601 is rarely used in English-speaking countries except maybe in computing, and even if it's not ambiguous, it will strike our readers as odd and hard to read. The date preferences are there, but a vast majority of our readers are unregistered, so they'll still see whatever's typed exactly as-is. Let's adhere to normal English-language dating conventions, and if someone really wants ISO, they can always change their preferences. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 06:37, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, date preferences do not work for unregistered users. Many registered users don't use them either. I wish we had statistics on usage. The date preference mechanism is a cure that causes more problems than the disease. I would be happy to see it abolished. But I am still a little confused as to what is being suggested. Please propose the new text that you would like. bobblewik 11:35, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I would replace the section

The ISO formats, e.g., 2004-02-17 are less ambiguous but also not as widely comprehended. Redirects for other ISO forms should always be created. The YYYY-MM-DD format currently only follows the style of ISO 8601, but not the proleptic Gregorian calendar.

to read

The ISO formats, e.g., 2004-02-17 are less ambiguous but also not as widely comprehended, and therefore other formats are normally preferred. If for some reason using ISO is necessary, redirects for other ISO forms should always be created. The YYYY-MM-DD format currently only follows the style of ISO 8601, but not the proleptic Gregorian calendar.

And under "Incorrect date formats", change

Do not use numbers to express a month, except in full ISO 8601 format, which always includes the year. Always express a month as a whole word (for example, "February") to avoid ambiguity. In the ISO 8601 format, a leading zero is always added to single-digit months and days.

to

Never use numbers to express a month, unless for some reason the ISO 8601 format (which always includes the year) is necessary. Always express a month as a whole word (for example, "February") to avoid ambiguity.

Again, after consideration, I can't find a single reason that ISO should be used. I know it's annoying for me, at least, to figure out what the correct month is for any month-numbered format, and it's even more annoying when the numbers are in an odd order (such as, say, with the year first). As far as I can tell, month-named formats are completely unambiguous to everyone and nobody has any difficulty reading them. Maybe people are using ISO because they prefer it stylistically, but I think the ease of reading for some is more important than the stylistic preference of anyone. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:08, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Working in an international company, we used to have a mix of date formats (MM/DD and DD/MM) in communications with our partners in other parts of the world. Replacing this by uniform usage of ISO 8601 this has eliminated uncertainty and misunderstandings. I never met any people that did not immediately understand this format, but it might take some time to get fluent with it. Putting the year first gives the clue that this format is used. The proposed changes above unduly deprecate the ISO standard. I propose to change the above mentioned sections as follows:

The ISO formats, e.g., 2004-02-17 are not ambiguous and are therefore preferred. The YYYY-MM-DD format currently only follows the style of ISO 8601, but not the proleptic Gregorian calendar.

and

If no year is present, do not use numbers to express a month. In such cases express a month as a whole word (for example, "February") to avoid ambiguity.

−Woodstone 08:42, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

We normally assume that everything is allowed unless forbidden. However, in this case we are specifically stating that ISO 8601 is permitted, presumably we think it is necessary to prevent a future dispute. Giving permission seems to be all that is required. I have no idea how or why there is a reference to proleptic Gregorian calendar and I do not think it is necessary. I am not aware of any other clear and present problems with this issue so we could try something like:

• ISO 8601 date formats such as YYYY-MM-DD (e.g. 2006-02-13) are permitted.

bobblewik 23:05, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

I think this is actually a technical comment, that the wiki-linked YYYY-MM-DD does not follow the proleptic calendar as the ISO 8601 format recommends. The ISO 8601 days count one day at a time straight back into negative years (where -0001 is 2 BC). The Gregorian calendar doesn't actually cover years before adoption in the 16th century, and previous Julian calendar dates disagree with Gregorian dates. The comment just says that when a YYYY-MM-DD day appears, it's a Gregorian date after 1582 and a Julian date before 1582. —Daelin @ 2006–02–15 05:55Z

I don't see how "14 February 2006" is ambiguous. "12-02" or "12/2" are ambiguous, of course, they are already banned. ISO 8601 is not English, at the very least, it is not accurate prose. While its use in tables, to assist alignment or to save space, might work, I would not expect to see, "On 2006-02-14, some guy was lonely".

Let's forget about those who have set preferences for a moment, and consider new or unregistered users. (Remember that a format doesn't need to actually need to be "allowed" as written for user preferences to use that format, technically speaking.) I'd bet anything most people probably wouldn't care about "February 14, 2006" vs. "14 February 2006", but "2006-02-14" would throw them off-balance a bit. This is an encyclopedia. It uses a formal, accessible tone. It is not the responsibility of the reader to become fluent in a not-often-used date format (I won't say "rarely", the point is, in this type of writing, we generally spell dates out.) Wikipedia is an international English encyclopedia, not an international multi-lingual encyclopedia. Neonumbers 06:06, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

This is why I wish new and unregistered users were given a default format; so that they wouldn't see 2006-02-14 even if someone wrote it. Stephen Turner (Talk) 09:29, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

However, given that that isn't the case, I think it is right to mandate against the use of ISO 8601 dates. I know that I did use them at one time, not realising that unregistered users would see them. I would propose:

1. Drop the last two examples from #Date formatting.
2. Rewrite #ISO date formats as follows:

   ISO 8601 dates, for example 1958-02-17, should not generally be used. Even though the software will convert such dates according to users' date preferences (for example, [[1958-02-17]] → 1958-02-17), new users and unregistered users do not have any date preferences set, and will therefore see the unconverted ISO 8601 date. This format is often not understood, and so should be avoided.

3. Rewrite the first bullet point of #Incorrect date formats as follows:

   Do not use numbers to express a month; always express a month as a whole word (for example, "February") to avoid ambiguity.

Stephen Turner (Talk) 09:51, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

As my following comment indicates, I strongly disagree with this idea. We should not rule against what is sometimes a good practice because of a current niggling technical detail. Yes, ISO 8601 dates should not usually appear in prose. No, we should not prohibit the use of ISO 8601 dates. I don't think ISO 8601 dates should appear in place where they should be wikilinked. A simple style guideline of "write out months in prose" handles that. —Daelin @ 2006–02–15 06:00Z

ISO 8601 dates are independent of context, including language. That's the benefit. It's also much easier to programmatically interpret. As far as good English style is preferred, the month should be spelled out. ISO 8601 is specifically intended for labelling, not prose. It belongs in mail headers, on soda cans, in tables, in charts, and anywhere a date should appear outside of a complete sentence. Anywhere you'd concievably want to use a numerical date, use ISO 8601. When the context is obviously an American English paragraph, there's not much benefit.

Please do not discourage ISO 8601 use, but emphasis the rule that things should generally be spelled out in paragraph.

I'd also like to comment that when a series of dates appear in a paragraph, I'd personally appreciate it if the ISO 8601 date were presented parenthetically so that I can more easily compare the sequence of dates. I say ISO 8601 because it's brief, significant-digit ordered, unambiguous, linguistically neutral (even English/American), and easily understood by everyone.

—Daelin @ 2006–02–15 05:45Z

Thanks for your reply, Daelin. I don't think our positions are actually that far apart: maybe I just need to phrase my proposal a bit better by judicious insertion of "in normal text" or something like that. Let me ask this: is there ever a situation in which it's a good idea to have a wikilinked ISO 8601 date? That's really what I'm trying to "forbid". Stephen Turner (Talk) 10:18, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

That's a little tricky. I don't think there's ever a situation in which it's a good idea to have Wikipedia do date translation from ISO 8601. It seems that's the primary purpose of linking dates. It's a date though, so all the pedestrian usefulness of linking dates applies. It's just that, generally, where an ISO 8601 date should appear (not in prose), it should not be translated. This is doubly true because ISO 8601 dates should be proleptic, but wiki dates are not.

Now, if you're interested in the events that happened in a particular month or day, you can always look it up in Wikipedia the normal way. That's true of all wiki links, though. However, I'd be willing to sacrifice ISO 8601 links for the reasons we both cited.

—Daelin @ 2006–02–16 01:09Z

I skimmed this section, and I just wanted to mention that one reason that most English speakers do not recognize the ISO 8601 format is becuase they do NOT see it. If people saw it used, they would grow accustomed to it, but they do not becuase it's not used. I agree that it's uncyclopedic for something to be written "On 2006-01-29...," but just becaue it doesn't look great in formal prose does not mean it should not be used elsewhere. And somewhere way up there was a comment that US usage of dates is not in logical order, being m/d/yy or m/d/yyyy (yes, I do mean m and d rather than mm and dd). However, the same is true (to a greater extent, possibly) of the d/m/yy or d/m/yyyy formats--logically, if one is looking at something, seeing the day first gives one no perspective of the range of times or even the order of occurence of events--instead, seeing the month first at least helps, but seeing the year first makes the most sense, it's in largest to smallest order and can be "alphebetized" or ordered easily and logically while still being chronolical. //MrD9 08:46, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree with you. In my opinion, the best would be to adhere to the ISO standards as much as possible. . . that's what they were created for. Wikipedia is not your run of the mill encyclopedia, and I suspect that is not easy to find an english language encyclopedia in most non-english speaking countries, but you can definitely find the internet. And, of course, English is a required language in most countries.

In Colombia we use 1.000.000,00, yet Wikipedia seems to only recommend 1,000,000.00. Again, to eliminate confusion, ISO dictates either 1000000,00, 1 000 000,00, 1000000.00, or 1 000 000.00. There are also other issues of a similar manner that I won't go into.

Finally, I would also advocate the use of parenthesis when confusion is bound to happen in any general setting. For example:

The pencil is 11 cm ( 4 3/8 in ) long.

The Real Madrid is one of Spain's premier football ( soccer ) teams.

On that year, a CEO made, on average, 21 500 000 USD ( 21,500,000 USD ).

Keep writin'! ( writtin'? Maybe we should also standardize English spelling. . . just kidding! ) --GusCaicedo 2006-02-21T13:59-05

GusCaicedo, this is the English Wikipedia, and therefore quite naturally we follow the conventions of English, not other languages. In English-speaking nations, 1.000,000 is never used; it's always 1,000.000 or, in some scientific contexts, 1 000.000. There's no ambiguity in English there. Granted, there are many non-native English speakers on Wikipedia, but it's primarily intended for English speakers; otherwise we'd ban the use of less-common words where commoner ones would work, for instance, and maybe use more "logical" spelling or grammar despite the increased burden this would put on English speakers.

Anyway, are most of us agreed that at least ISO shouldn't be used in prose? What about dates of publication in references? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:01, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Some Thoughts

Some thoughts: I think the bottom line throughout the encyclopedia should be consistency. Create a base and stay with it. I realize that is what a Manual of Style is supposed to create and maintain. What I see are a group of people, each with their own personal style to promote. There can and will be “chaos” in the substance of the material in the encyclopedia since it covers such a wide area of information. However, if the structure, the basic framework that is supposed to contain that information is chaotic, and changes from article to article, you have an unreadable disaster. One of the primary functions of Wikipedia (as in any encyclopedia) should be to organize this chaos.

Our brain depends a great deal on a certain amount of consistency and familiarity in our day-to-day surroundings. If the very basic elements of your life changed day to day you would soon be unable to function. But if the basic elements remain constant, you are able to deal with those elements that are different day to day. Each article in Wikipedia is a day; that basic structure should remain constant as the information changes.

Without this consistency it's like a group of architects arguing about what the basic structure of a building should be; each having their own creative concept; without considering that real people are going to have to navigate it every day. If that basic structure changed from day to day, the effect on the person trying to navigate it would be total disorientation.

Specific suggestions: Constants article to article - Presentation of Birth & Death Dates should be consistent, easily read and located in the same place (that's all the reader may be looking for); Location of Birth should be presented as close to the beginning of the body of the Article as possible (that's all the reader may be looking for); Links to other Articles should be relevant to the specific article it's keyed in. Imagine you're sitting in a library with unlimited resources; you come upon a term, name or other piece of information in the Article you're reading; would you get up, cross the room and pull out another text to look-up that reference? (I know that Pittsburgh is a city; I know it's located in Pennsylvania; is knowing more about the city of Pittsburgh going to enhance my knowledge of the specific subject I am researching at the time, or is it going to be an unnecessary sidetrack? The trunk of the tree is the primary subject you are researching; how many branches can there be before you no longer see that trunk?

I’m fairly new to Wikipedia, and am fascinated by its concept and execution. I plan to contribute as much as I can. More later… Michael David 13:09, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

The "sidetrack" is one of the fascinations of good reference works. I generally assume the target audience is reasonably smart in their late teens, with good English, from a distant land, who is not familiar with the subject. Therfore I don't expect them to know more cities than perhaps New York, London, Paris and Tokyo, to know any jargon, or obscure words (like propinquity or crapulence for example). Therefore liberal (but not silly) use of linking, can provide a key to contextualise articles. One of my problems with policy is "wikipedia is not a dictionary" because it can (and often does) provide a valuable self-glossary. Rich Farmbrough. 18:32, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Michael David, welcome, and I fully agree with you (as you can see on my user page rants). One of our main problems is that, in a consensus-driven community, we often end up with compromise such as, "do either" — acceptable in some situations, but with trivial matters, absolutely not. However, the manual is doing a fairly decent job of standardising, at the very least, what it can. Your suggestions are welcome. (I think, but am not sure, that dates but not locations of birth and death have already been standardised.) I'm meant to be on a wiki-break, and I might not be back for a while. Neonumbers 05:36, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Dates of birth and death.

I would like to add the fairly standard format abbreviation fl. (floruit or "florished") to the DOBAD section e.g.

• (fl.1214 - 1244)
• (fl.1244, 1316)
• (1202, fl. 1622)

This is as unambiguous as I can make it without (re)introducing b. for born and d. for died. Comments? Rich Farmbrough. 18:21, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps it should be a link fl. Rich Farmbrough. 18:33, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

It has its use, but I would use it only when necessary and always link it, because I think a lot of people wouldn't be familiar with it. Stephen Turner (Talk) 18:43, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Strangely enough I have come across fl. used twice on wp since mentioning this. Rich Farmbrough. 23:20, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

In lists of people, by name (my own concern) or in Dabs, the fl. lk is uneeded and a bad idea. These navigational tools do their job best by lking, with stunningly rare exceptions, only to the articles (bios, where fl. is concerned) that are the respective bios of the people listed or the articles that might have had the title if there weren't competititors for the title. There is no reason to lk fl. in lists and dabs, in light of two facts:

1. There's no navigational need for users to know more than that the date after fl. has something to do with the person they are seeking (which BTW is all that "fl." communicates to anyone).
2. Those who wonder what it means have a logical place to find out: the lk that is separated from it by the preceding blank and open-paren, which leads to an article that (supposedly) has the dates in it and is a place far less burdened by the lk to floruit.

--Jerzy•t 23:26, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Dab pages should not have any links, apart from to the articles. That's already covered by Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(disambiguation_pages)#Individual_entries. I don't have a strong opinion about lists. Stephen Turner (Talk) 10:06, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

That isn't an absolute rule, but a qualified one, though I'd say it should apply in this case (the most obvious time when something else could be linked is when the dab link is for the time being a redlink to something that should eventually be written). In any case, that's what Jerzy's explanation implied wrt the issue at hand. Gene Nygaard 15:52, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Village pump discussion titled: "Is it permissible to implement the guidance in the Manual of Style?"

There is a Village pump discussion (sparked by the date link dispute) titled: . "Is it permissible to implement the guidance in the Manual of Style?". Interested parties are invited to contribute.
bobblewik 15:43, 11 February 2006 (UTC)