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

Revision as of 05:32, 7 February 2009

Revision as of 05:53, 7 February 2009

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{{Supplement|[[Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)]]}}

Since at least 2004, it has been possible for registered users to set a preference regarding the way dates appear to them. InWikilinking Septemberall 2008,{{nowrap|dates / years}} therepurely werefor fourthe possibleuse formatsof toautoformating chooseis fromnow discouraged (See [[MOS:UNLINKDATES]]).

Up until September 2008, there were four possible formats to choose from:

* '''MonthName Day, Year''' as in January 15, 2001 (symbolized as MMMM dD, YYYY)

* '''Day MonthName Year''' as in 15 January 2001 (symbolized as dD MMMM YYYY)

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* '''Year-MonthNumber-Day''' as in 2001-01-15 (symbolized as YYYY-MM-DD) Though not identified as such on the preferences page, this is the same way dates are displayed in [[ISO 8601]] format.

Dates that were wikilinked (see below) would thenhave bebeen autoformatted according to the preference that had been chosen.

Autoformatting dates has had several disadvantages:

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*Autoformatting does not function for piped links to date elements, such as "<nowiki>[[20 June|the 20th of June]]</nowiki>" or "<nowiki>[[1997 in South African sport|1997]]</nowiki>". (Several forms of piped links break the date-formatting function.)

* Links to date ranges in the same calendar month, such as "<nowiki>[[December 13-1713–17]]</nowiki>" or "<nowiki>the night of [[30/31 May]]</nowiki>" cause autoformatting to fail. The autoformatting mechanism will output such dates in a damaged form: '''30/May 31''', etc.

Date elements on disambiguation pages and section headings should never be linked; the same applies to quotations, unless the original quote is linked.