Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 08:15, 13 November 2003

Revision as of 09:04, 13 November 2003

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I don't see how ISO 8601 is even remotely relevant, and would object to it being used at all, and would change any usage of it. ISO 8601 specifies a format for computer-readable dates, not human-readable dates. It is something used by CS and Engineering people, not encyclopedia writers. You will note that no major manual of style even knows of the ''existence'' of ISO 8601, let alone recommends its use. In short, it is wholly unsuitable to an encyclopedia. To see just how uninterested in human readability ISO 8601 is, their allowed encodings for the date/time "13:10:30 on February 14, 1993" are "19930214T131030" or "1993-02-14T13:10:30" (quoted directly from the standard). This is obviously ridiculous for use in written text, which is why people who write encyclopedias don't refer to ISO documents. --[[User:Delirium|Delirium]] 08:01, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

:I'm content to have it as an option, and am equally content to have others choose other options. I would respect what others use, and would see attempts to change what I use as highly disrespectful. The 2003 editions of both ''The Chicago Manual of Style'' at ¶9-40 and the ''Oxford Style Manual'' at ¶7.10.1 mention it without recommendation. Which major style manual did you have in mind? I've never suggested the alternate usage without hyphens. I have not taken a position on the time portion of the standard, even though I strangly favour the usage of a 24-hour clock which Wikipedia is already using in its date stamps. The representation of time is more easily opposed than dates, so heading there is really a straw man argument. I am not even suggesting that we adopt the Year-Week-Day format or decimal rendering for the time of day. If on the other hand, someone else proposed the European technique of using roman numerals for the months I would not oppose them. I would not normally use that myself, but I would respect the choice of the original author of the article. Other calendars would be treated respectfully, and I would at least try to understand what is being done. [[User:Eclecticology|<font size=+1>&#9774;</font> Eclecticology]] 09:04, 2003 Nov 13 (UTC)

: And apparently the ISO itself agrees with me: the news section of http://www.iso.org/ does not use ISO 8601 dates, instead using dates of the form ''4 November 2003'' (the only use of ISO 8601 is in a computer context: the last-modified timestamp). --[[User:Delirium|Delirium]] 08:12, Nov 13, 2003 (UTC)

:That is very inconsistent of them. [[User:Eclecticology|<font size=+1>&#9774;</font> Eclecticology]] 09:04, 2003 Nov 13 (UTC)