Wikipedia:Date formattings

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Aim: to fix up all date references on WP be cromulant with the MoS WP:DATES

Note that this is a moving target - every day hundreds if not thousands of incorrectly formatted/linked dates come into being. However we do have #Tools to help us.

Contents

[edit] Full dates

Full dates should be linked per MOSNUM

[edit] Areas to avoid

  • Direct quotes
  • Proper names (eg. organisations, movements, book titles)
  • Names of images
  • Wikilinks
  • URLs
    • Tip: sometimes inserting a non-breaking space between day and month can prevent a date being picked up in future.

[edit] Day month or month day

Beware rare false positives, for example:

  • The Long March 2 Rocket

[edit] Date ranges

Something like 12 - 13 July (or May 21-22) needs to become the slightly unfortunate 12 July - 13 July. If only one date is linked some people will see 12 - July 13 or 21 May - 22.

[edit] Centuries

In many cases centuries have been given an un-cromulent capital C. or a capital for the ordinal e.g. Eighteenth. Also sentences starting with a numeral should be changed where possible, either by using words or by re-casting. The Oxford style manual recommends using words throughout.

Also look out for Roman numerals, especially in articles translated from the French.

  • Avoid changing case in titles of books or articles. (Except we convert all-caps titles as a matter of MoS anyway.)

[edit] Months and days of week

Months and days of the week should only rarely be linked.

Irregular task: chose a month or day of week, click "what links here" and remove any undesirable links. Note that links can be piped links, or using the cite web template accessdate=February (replace with accessmonthday=February).

[edit] Whitelists

We maintain provisional "whitelists" of articles which may have one or more valid links, please feel free to add new instances or remove any that are wrong.

Note a rough catchall is Category:<something>calender(s) and Category:Days , Months and Weeks


[edit] Month year combinations

Generally Month Year or Year Month should not be linked.

[edit] Tools

Useful tools include:

  • The wiki itself:
    • What links here
  • AWB see WP:AWB
    • Here is some XML to unlink dates, based on User:Bobblewik's dates javascript.
    • Here is XML that solely unlinks "straight" links to days of week and months of year
  • Javascript
    • For unlinking dates
    • For linking dates