Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers/Archive 60

Abbreviating decades
Is there a guideline on whether it's acceptable to abbreviate decades, and if so, how? I'm thinking of a context in which saying "the 1970s and 1980s" appears slightly stilted, and "the 1970s and '80s" would be more natural; however, I don't see any recognition that it's ever OK to say " '80s", or whether there's a preference about the use of the apostrophe. (" '80s" is abbreviated from "1980s" and so is usually written with the apostrophe, but I think some style guides prefer to avoid the apostrophe altogether. Note that this is different from the incorrect usage "1980's", which is correct only if you're saying "belonging to 1980" or "1980 is".)

Has this been discussed before? (I didn't really want to search through 57 archives.) —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 04:09, 4 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I believe that the guideline is not to abbreviate decades at all, that is, "the 1970s and 1980s" is correct. Let me double-check that...
 * The guideline is in the "Incorrect date formats" section. It says that an apostrophe is expected, and it's acceptable (but not advised) when not ambiguous, but I don't really like that... anyway, that's what it says.
 * Remember that you are writing formally, so what you would say naturally isn't always the same, especially when it comes to dates. My strong advice is to go with 1980s, but if you really want to abbreviate it, then make sure an apostrophe's there.  Neonumbers 09:57, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

%
In keeping with Ref. [6: ISO 31-0], this Guide takes the position that it is acceptable to use the internationally recognized symbol % (percent) for the number 0.01 with the SI and thus to express the values of quantities of dimension one (see Sec. 7.14) with its aid. When it is used, a space is left between the symbol % and the number by which it is multiplied [6: ISO 31-0]. Further, in keeping with Sec. 7.6, the symbol % should be used, not the name "percent." Example:  xB = 0.0025 = 0.25 %   but not:   xB = 0.0025 = .25%   or   xB = 0.25 percent —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.155.158.96 (talk • contribs) 14:35, 8 October 2006 UTC


 * This style guide, as well as the Chicago Manual of Style, 14th ed., paragraph 8.18, indicate there is no space between a number and a percent sign. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, an organization that has adopted SI and which has published standards on about SI (IEEE/ASTM SI 10-1997) does not place a space between a number and a percent sign in its magazine Spectrum (see, for example, page 51 of the September 2006 issue). Since the ISO has no law-making authority and just creates standards for those who choose to adopt them, I suggest this guide should continue to recommend no space between a number and a percent sign. --Gerry Ashton 19:30, 8 October 2006 (UTC)


 * What about degree signs? 50 °/50° or 50 °C/50°C — Omegatron 16:55, 19 October 2006 (UTC)


 * NIST's Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI) on page 16 says there is no space before ° when used to mean degree of angle, but there is a space before °C. Also, when an angle is expressed in degrees, minutes, and seconds, there are no spaces at all; the example given is 30°22'8". I looked in the Chicago Manual of Style and didn't find such clear-cut advise. --Gerry Ashton 19:02, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Let's just relax and use some common sense. Expressions like ten percent and 10% are traditional in English prose and typography, so it is appropriate to use either. SI style like 10 % is used in many scientific publications, so it may be appropriate in such articles (but include a non-breaking space, or these expressions may line-wrap in an ugly, amateurish way). Pretty much the same goes for ten degrees Celsius, 10° C, 10 °C. Remember that it's a style guide, not scripture. —Michael Z. 2006-10-19 17:31 Z 

Firearm Calibres
We've been having a discussion over at WikiProject Military history regarding the naming conventions for firearm calibres. The general consensus is that the current standard is wrong and needs to be changed to reflect common usage and convention. For example, the article entitled "7.62 x 54 mm R" is at odds with how the calibre is usually written- convention is "7.62x54R", without the spaces or the "mm". The discussion can be found here. We'd appreciate your input. --Commander Zulu 04:51, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
 * No-one has any thoughts on the subject? --Commander Zulu 08:30, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Given the lack of objection, I'm going to add something on the article page here shortly to reflect the standard for firearm calibres, unless someone has any major problems. --Commander Zulu 10:07, 7 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd be reluctant for you to include anything on this page. This page will quickly become bloated if every field has its own guidance. It's better if each WikiProject has its own style guide on its own page. Stephen Turner (Talk) 11:01, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
 * My concern is that this forms an actual manual of style, whereas the WP:Milhist page only covers Military History. Besides, I'd argue that firearm calibres are likely to pop up often enough to make a mention of the preferred style here worthwhile.--Commander Zulu 11:50, 7 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, maybe other people have different views, but I feel it's an extremely specialised topic, and if we included guidance on notating every topic of similar status, the page would soon be twice as long as it currently is. This page should concentrate on dates and numbers that crop up in all subject areas. Stephen Turner (Talk) 12:25, 7 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Even if those were true names, there are certain things that you may freely alter for typographic reasons, like casing, space or character shape (e.g. ’ instead of ' in O’Connor or, here, × instead of x).
 * If there is a (preferably international) standard explicitely using any kind of “[0-9]+([.,][0-9]+)? ?(mm)? ?[×x] ?[0-9]+ ?(mm)? ?[A-z]*” (RegEx notation) you should use that, but if all the notations are just customary you should follow the rules of the WP:MoS for units, because then it looks like a designation including units that has no prescribed format. Even if there is a standard or at least a NATO protocol (or whatever they call it) it is probably vague on the issue, because the creators did not care or think about such details and then you should still follow the Manual of Style in effect.
 * JFTR, WP is not a military history publication but a general purpose encyclopedia. Christoph Päper 16:48, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Very large numbers
In the article, we have
 * Very large numbers may be divided up by commas every three places (e.g.: 2,900,000), starting from the decimal separator in both directions. (This is different from the SI/ISO 31-0 notation style, where punctuation marks are not used, but as an option, a thin space may be inserted every three places.)

Why is it we do not follow the international standard with the spaces? It is universally understood and completely unambiguous. In &lt;math&gt;, thin space is represented as /,. In plain text, I don't know how to represent it - perhaps that answers my question: We don't follow the standard because we can't?--Niels Ø 13:24, 19 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I would love to see SI units used, and only SI units used (with very few exceptions) and ISO 31 formatting rules followed with respect to those SI units. In my view, it would not be unreasonable to enforce internationally-agreed standards in an international project such as the Wikipedia. I would assume that the reason we use US customary units and US customary formatting in the Wikipedia is that many Wikipedians are from the US, are used to their own way of doing things, and are reluctant to change. Blaise 15:17, 22 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Either find a way to type the thin space as easily as a comma, or forget it. Any method that requires doubling the amount of typing and remembering obscure codes will never happen. --Gerry Ashton 18:15, 22 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Some more thoughts on standardising the style and format of Wikipedia articles: I think one might have a decision to recommend one standard format, and yet accept that many editors write articles in other formats, leaving it to nitpickers, bots, and the like, to convert their input to the standard format. This applies to many of the issues discussed here: Spatiation at percent symbols, degree symbols and units; 3-digit grouping; use of BC/BCE and AD/CE; use of SI/customary units; etc. It could even be applied to the issue of British vs US English, but that might be too problematic. No-one should frown at editors adding material to an article in a format inconsistent with the chosen standards or with the rest of the article, but of course it is legitimate (and desirable) to edit such additions for consistency.
 * One could imagine the toolbar above the edit box extended to include buttons for thin space and non-breakable space.
 * One could imagine an automated way of making measurements in SI units clickable, linking them to their conversion into customary units.
 * One could imagine style choises in each article being indicated in a comment at the top of the article, with an indication why (typically: because it was the choice made by the editor creating the article). Presently that could include chosen variant of English, choice between BC/BCE etc, and other choices, but I advocate limiting the number of such choices to be made by the editors to an absolute minimum.--Niels Ø 15:33, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Much as I dislike American units, there is value in quoting the source unit first, with a conversion to metric afterwards, because conversions are easy to get wrong (over-precision, calculation error etc.). Our section on Units of measurement recognises this. Stephen Turner (Talk) 15:49, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Date links
What are my options if I want to make a date as few characters as possible. I guess I would like it to look like 5/13/2002 or if it has to be a dash 5-13-2002. The manual of style has 1958-02-17 : 1958-02-17 but this is what I get for 09-30-2004. Thanks - Peregrinefisher 01:20, 27 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for asking! Please don't use any of your suggestions, because they don't work for users outside North America &mdash; we don't write dates in that order.
 * If you really need very short dates (e.g., in a thin column in a table), 1958-02-17 (unlinked) is acceptable. But full dates, linked, are preferable where possible: February 17, 1958 which will display according to the user's preferred date format if they've set one up.
 * Stephen Turner (Talk) 09:38, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Ordinals?
Should they be spelled out? i.e. second instead of 2nd? --plange 22:43, 28 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Good question (I'm surprised it's not already covered).
 * I would follow the same rule as ordinary numbers. So in prose, always (read: normally) spell out first, second, third ... tenth.  Ordinals above ten can be spelt out only if it can be done so in one or two words: thirty-second, forty-ninth, two-hundredth.  Otherwise, use the number: 249th, not two-hundred-and-forty-ninth.  In tables and infoboxes, always (read: normally) use the numeral 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and so on.
 * Hope that helps. Neonumbers 23:33, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Sure does, and that makes sense! Thanks! --plange 00:25, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
 * What about for centuries? My watchlist just registered an editor changing an entire article from "5th Century BC" to "Fifth Century BC"--do others have thoughts about this?  I'm certainly more familiar with the former usage, but have never given it much thought.  Chick Bowen 04:26, 2 November 2006 (UTC)


 * That should be uncapitalized: "fifth century BC". —Michael Z. 2006-11-26 18:52 Z 


 * And what should the deal be with superscripting the th's and rd's? Should they be or not? 03:44, 26 November 2006 (UTC) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.102.186.234 (talk • contribs).


 * Heavens, no. That example of naïve typographic "sophistication" looks terrible, attracts far too much attention to the ordinal on the page, and makes it look like a superscripted footnote reference. —Michael Z. 2006-11-26 18:50 Z 

Exemptions for airport articles
Some editors are claiming that dates should not be wikified for airline schedule information in airport articles (see, for example, here). Before I pursue this further, I would like to see some other opinions. -- Donald Albury 12:17, 31 October 2006 (UTC)


 * This is certainly wrong. Full dates should always be linked (with very limited technical exceptions). Stephen Turner (Talk) 13:10, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

recent edit concerning the linking of dates
I strongly disagree with "almost always". I'm so pissed off with the linking thing that I'm now not linking dates, even at the expense of foregoing the auto-formatting.

The problem should be shifted to the techs and above who've made auto-formatting and linking the same process. Bad idea.

I suggest that you soften the "almost always". I'll just refuse to comply if it stays. Tony 13:40, 31 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Of course the technical decision is wrong: I absolutely agree with that, and I long for the day when we can do away with all those date links. However, that's not the question. The question is, given the current state of the code, should full dates "almost always" be linked, and I think almost everyone is in agreement that they should be. If the misfeature ever gets fixed, I'm sure the style guidance would quickly change, but we're not writing guidance for that hypothetical world. Stephen Turner (Talk) 13:59, 31 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Is it remotely possible, then, that a push might be mounted to fix it? Tony 14:58, 31 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I would happily support such a push, but I don't know what an effective procedure would be. Anyone? Stephen Turner (Talk) 15:07, 31 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Agree with Stephen. FYI, the right place for discussing the feature change, where it in fact already has been "shifted to the techs" would be 4582 I suppose (unless there are still duplicate bug reports floating around). BTW, Steve Bennett's idea ( 19 January 2000 -> Behaves as current; 19 January 2000 -> no links shown, only reformatting) is my personal favourite. --Francis Schonken 15:10, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Nice; I could gather more support; has anyone experience in bringing issues to that forum? I don't. Tony 13:26, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Would anyone support a proposal for a new linking system in mediawiki (the wikipedia software) for dates, measurements and currency so they are formated automatically according to preferences? --Clawed 04:15, 2 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I think date preferences are more manageable than currency preferences. In the case of currency, do you propose to convert between the currencies of various countries? Where do you get the conversion factors? Do you present the present day conversion or the conversion as of the date some event in the article occured?


 * In the case of measurements, are you thinking of converting from metric to American units? The preference can vary according to the subject matter; an American might want to measure distance in miles while driving, but measure the focal length of photographic lenses in millimeters. --Gerry Ashton 04:47, 2 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Measurements also have the problem of how many significant figures to include, and which is the source unit and which is the converted unit. So I think dates should be tackled first; they are much more likely to reach agreement. If the syntax also allowed future expansion to other areas, that might be an advantage, but only a minor one. Stephen Turner (Talk) 08:19, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

These seem to be good points, and auto-conversions of weights, measures and currencies as an optional preference may be worth looking into. But first, let's lobby to overcome this regrettable technical connection of linking and the auto-formatting for dates. I've looked at the MediaZilla link provided above, and wonder why nothing came of that push earlier this year. Tony 10:08, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Making date links be only about cross-referencing
I see three aspects to the question of how to write dates at Wikipedia: personal/national custom, logical writing style (specifically, punctuation), and cross-referencing.

Encoding a date so that it is a link results in three things:

1. The date appears in different ways to different readers; which form of the date appears is the result of user preference (or default).

2. The date is punctuated logically or illogically (and thus, according to my prescriptivism, properly or improperly); this depends on the combination of the original writing and the displayed writing.

3. The date appears in a different color, with underlining, and acts as a cross-reference to another article.

My personal opinion about Point 1 is that user date preferences should be removed from Wikipedia's programming, and that the Manual of Style should require exactly one style for dates that aren't part of direct, verbatim quotations. My personal preference is that that style be "Monday 6 November 2006" (with perfectly acceptable shorter forms being, as the context warrants, "Monday", "Monday 6", "Monday 6 November", "6 November 2006", "6 November", and "November 2006"). I have little sympathy for the reader or editor who likes to pretend that "6 November" is clear while "November 6" is incomprehensible gibberish (or vice versa) or likes to get angry about which form is in front of him. (My reason for advocating the date–month–year sequence is that it shrinks the matter of commas.) Wikipedia has other style standards that contradict one personal/national custom or another: an example is which punctuation to place inside and outside quotation marks—and Wikipedia has a single policy (not a double one for, say, Britons and Americans), and a single way of displaying the punctuation (no stuff about encoding the punctuation as a link so that it appears differently for different readers). I also think that, when a date is encoded, it should have to be written in the same way as a non-encoded date (except, of course, the insertion of the double square brackets), and it should have to be displayed in exactly the same way as a non-encoded date (except, of course, the color and underlining).

If Wikipedia were to become as I recommend in my discussion of Point 1, then Points 2 and 3 would be simplified drastically.

Point 2 would become a matter of simply an improperly written date, which could be corrected easily. There would be no matter of a properly written date having its displayed punctuation imperfected by an inadequately written program that changes the date's display form. The present program illogicalizes the punctuation for a good many dates at Wikipedia:


 * On 22 August 2006, Sam wrote to Alex. [Properly punctuated and encoded.]
 * and
 * On August 22, 2006, Sam wrote to Alex. [Properly punctuated and encoded.]
 * both result in
 * On August 22, 2006, Sam wrote to Alex. [Properly punctuated display.]
 * or
 * On 22 August 2006, Sam Wrote to Alex. [Properly punctuated display.]
 * depending on viewer preference.


 * And that's fine. BUT
 * Sam's 22 August 2006 email to Alex is long. [Properly punctuated and encoded.]
 * and
 * Sam's August 22, 2006, email to Alex is long. [Properly punctuated and encoded.]
 * result in four different things, depending on viewer preference, which are
 * Sam's 22 August 2006 email to Alex is long. [Properly punctuated display.]
 * Sam's August 22, 2006 email to Alex is long. [Improperly punctuated display.]
 * Sam's 22 August 2006, email to Alex is long. [Improperly punctuated display.]
 * Sam's August 22, 2006, email to Alex is long. [Properly punctuated display.]


 * There, the first and fourth results have proper punctuation, but the second and third have faulty punctuation (a missing closing parenthetic comma in the second, and an extraneous comma in the third).

If there were only one way of writing a proper date link, and only one way of displaying a date link, this problem would be gone.

Point 3 would become only a matter of relevant cross-referencing, instead of also a matter of (im)proper punctuation and personal/national custom, if my suggestion were implemented.

My personal preference about when a date should act as a cross-reference (which I see as the worthy point of encoding a date as a link (I think this matter of personal/national custom is unworthy)) is that, if a date appears on the screen, I be able to click on that date to see what else happened on that date in history. The flow of my reading is not significantly distracted by the different appearance (color, underlining) that cross-references have. If the same date appears five times in a window without any scrolling, not all five occurrences should be cross-references. Also, any cross-reference that seems to lead to an article about a year or date in general (rather than, say, an article about pop music in that year) better lead to what it seems to lead to.

I understand that people will still argue about how relevant a cross-reference is in a certain spot. But the argument about links should be only about cross-referencing—not about this waste of time, effort, emotion, and computer resources, not to mention this imperfector of punctuation, that is the present way of encoding and displaying dates for personal/national preference. My main concern is the combination of (1) not having an imperfect date-rendering program botch the punctuation, (2) not having people fight over personal/national style when all we have to do is say "There is only one preferred style (in terms of punctuation and ordering) of writing dates at Wikipedia (except in verbatim quotes from other sources), and all editors have the right to make dates conform to that style, and no editor should cause a date to stop conforming to that style", and (3) having the link-encoding argument be reduced to the sole question of cross-referencing.

In no other aspect of Wikipedia (at least to my knowledge) do we use linking for anything other than making a cross-reference—something that allows the reader to jump easily to another article to read more about that topic. The distinction between "November 6" and "6 November" isn't so important that it deserves a special bit of programming (and one that works imperfectly at that) and editors wasting their time on which form is appropriate for one article or another.

President Lethe 15:58, 7 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't think you'll find many people who agree with you on #1. Even if there were such a rule, it would be impossible to get editors to obey it, so it's better to have a means of switching between the different formats.


 * #2 has been noted before, but the benefits of #1 seem to outweigh the disadvantages of #2.


 * As for #3 ... well, as we've been discussing in the previous section, the problem is that one syntax does both #1 and #3, rather than there being a separate syntax for the two things. But we can't seem to persuade the developers that this is a problem.


 * Stephen Turner (Talk) 17:12, 7 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your response, Stephen Turner. I'm on a long break from Wikipedia these days, so won't be getting into much of an involved discussion on the topic right now; it's just that a friend recently asked me about something related, and I thought I may as well voice get around to voicing an opinion I've had for months.


 * But I will say something more about Point 1. First of all, I don't grasp why some readers may have, or claim to have, a harder time adjusting their brains to one date format or another than they have with colour/color, organize/organise, &c. Also, it seems that Wikipedia's single standard about punctuation with quotation marks is a good comparison for how this date matter could develop. True, we have some contributors who are unaware of, or choose to disregard, Wikipedia's single rule about whether to put within quotation marks a piece of punctuation that wasn't part of the original quotation; but, because we have a single, logical rule, any editor can go changing any text that deviates from the rule, and any editor can then point any dissenters to the Manual of Style, where the matter is settled. The good thing about making rules is that even the grumblers soon start obeying the rules—and then most persons, even the former grumblers, start seeing the benefits of the rules—and then people are like "This rule makes so much sense. How/why did we ever spend so much time doing things in those silly, other ways?" (I do understand that this can go the other way, in a closed, oppressed society, where few persons ever think to stop obeying an unjust or illogical rule.)


 * I'm pleased, by the way, to hear that Point 2 has been noted before; I didn't know anyone else had ever pointed it out. It may seem a small/non issue to many, but I find it important. ... Actually, I have one more thing to say about Point 2 and weighing advantages and disadvantages. If we restrict ourselves to reputable reference works on modern English punctuation, we find that—although such sources do mention both forms ("7 November 2006" and "November 7, 2006") as acceptable, depending on context—they don't say it's acceptable to go injecting extraneous commas ("Alex's 7 November 2006, email") or omitting half a mark of parenthesis ("Alex's November 7, 2006__email").


 * Anyway, that's all, at least for the moment.


 * President Lethe 19:08, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Preferred linked format?
When I first read a help page on wikitext, 1958-02-17 was the only format mentioned. Now it says a) several others work and b) that this one is not preferred anymore. So what linked format is preferred? Shinobu 15:11, 19 November 2006 (UTC)


 * It is preferable to use either February 17, 1958 or 17 February 1958 depending whether American English or Commonwealth English makes more sense for that particular article. The reason is that whichever format you type is what non-signed-in readers, or those who haven't set up their date preferences, will see. Stephen Turner (Talk) 15:17, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Direct quotations
Added a clarification to Direct quotations Section. Text as follows: "If the quote includes an obscure use of units (e.g., five million board feet of lumber) annotate it with a footnote which provides metric units rather than revising the actual quote; see the guidelines of Footnotes for an explanation of footnote generation using the '' one. Therefore the CSS-Solution might be the best in Practice, but i would like to suggest to use   instead of  :
 * 2.702
 * This Way even Users of Browsers without CSS-Support see the Periodicity indicated ( and   are mutually exclusive in CSS2). An Alternative is using Fractions, e.g. using Template:Frac:
 * — Christoph Päper 15:10, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
 * — Christoph Päper 15:10, 20 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Or, better yet, 226&frasl;37. Haven't you learned to add up the digits to see if the total is divisible by three?  Pretty easy to see that 1+1+1 is divisible by 3, and not much harder to figure out that 7 + 8 = 15 is divisible by 3.  Gene Nygaard 04:11, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Somehow i did not do that final Step, i have no Idea why. Christoph Päper 17:34, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I get a stray comma after dates
I get a leftover comma when my preferences transform the comma'd style to the non comma'd. I'm referring to the following advice:

If a date includes both a month and a day, then the date should almost always be linked to allow readers’ date preferences to work, displaying the reader’s chosen format. The day and the month should be linked together, and the year should be linked separately if present. For example:


 * Day, month, and year
 * February 17, 1958 → February 17, 1958
 * 17 February 1958 → 17 February 1958

This is all very well, but in practice you often have a necessary comma after the year, which produces things like: The party on 17 February 1958, was memorable. So it appears faultily punctuated.

It doesn't bother me much when I'm reading articles, but it does when I'm editing them. I would use the uncomma'd method myself (because I find it less fussy), but sometimes it's necessary to conform to the style already in the article. Am I doing something wrong, or is this problem unavoidable?

qp10qp 03:35, 30 November 2006 (UTC)


 * You're right, it's unavoidable. It's been mentioned on this page a few times, but there doesn't seem to be a solution given the current software. Stephen Turner (Talk) 12:07, 30 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, one non-technical solution, then, might be for the manual of style to recommend the form: 7 February 1958. (Forgive me if this has been done to death already.) qp10qp 15:59, 30 November 2006 (UTC)


 * It has. Sorry! See four sections up this page for one. Stephen Turner (Talk) 17:19, 30 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Aha. Cheers. Well, at least I was briefer. qp10qp 23:41, 30 November 2006 (UTC)