Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers

Unofficial anagram of the Manual of Style

Discussion about Era Notation Intertia

Currently the manual states that if a specific page has dates set using a certain era notation (BC vs. BCE) then it should remain that way unless their is a specific reason for this. I do not understand the motivation behind this and think it should be amended. If a user is willing to take the time to change a page to have more modern and proper notation (BCE-CE) then that should be appropriate and encouraged, specifically on pages regarding mathematical or scientific topics which should use the most current notation and be devoid of any of the religious connotation that BC-AD holds.Lessconfusedthanbefore (talk) 16:59, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

I flat-out reject your belief that BCE is better than BC. Further, you can't prove that most English-speakers prefer BCE over BC. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:47, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

-Jc3s5h, I'm not interested in whether a "majority" believe one way or another. Rather, respectable organizations like Chicago Manual of Style and Smithsonian declare a prefrence for CE and it seems that in order for Wikipedia to be a more inclusive and credible resource, it would behoove us to follow in their stead.Lessconfusedthanbefore (talk) 01:02, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

There is no religious connotation over using BC/AD, just as there is none over e.g. calling the first month of the year January (after Janus), or today’s day Wednesday (after Odin). Other than that the guideline makes it clear that both forms are acceptable and widely used, neither is better than the other. You simply have a preference for BCE/CE, which is fine. Use it in any article you write. But do not change the style in an existing article, unless there is some other good reason for it.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 18:46, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm interested in knowing, what makes you think Chicago Manual of Style and Smithsonian prefer CE over AD? Smithsonian's main site for current exhibits uses BC, no BCE to be seen, and the Chicago Manual of Style explicitly addresses this question, answering that they DO NOT recommend one over the other, in fact their wording of this answer suggests more that they dislike the use of BCE, if anything. — Crumpled Fire • contribs • 14:34, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

• Lessconfused, you are unknowingly stepping into a minefield. This has been an extremely contentious issue; there's even a special section of archives for this page devoted to it. Search the string BCE in the archives using the box at the top of this page, and you'll see. There are some doors man was never meant to reopen. EEng 19:27, 14 June 2017 (UTC)
• Aside from the central question, some cleanup edits needs to be made now. "Seek consensus on the talk page before making the change" as an emphatic commandment is against policy and must be reduced, since this is a guideline, to a recommendation, e.g. "It is advisable to seek ...". The specific demands in the material following this to use particular subject lines are WP:CREEP, are unlike anything else in MoS or any other guideline, and need to be removed. They don't serve any purpose anyway; "Why is this article using 'BC'?" is much more apt to attract discussion than a subject line of "Era". The "how to discuss things" material in the sentence after that is also CREEP.

  As for the central quetsion: EEng is correct that this topic is a stylistic warzone and has been one for a long time. However, the assertion by JohnBlackburne that "there is no religious connotation [to] using BC/AD" is absurd on its face, since the religious connotations of it are the source of the recurrent controversy, on and off Wikipedia, and were the very reason that CE/BCE alternatives were ever implemented. Etymological arguments about "Wednesday" are false equivalence through analogies that are not actually analogous. No analogies are ever going to get around the demonstrable fact that people on and off WP object to BC/AD specifically because of its tie to Christian dogma. The recurrent dispute here (which is a rather obvious WP:Systemic bias matter) is never going to go away until we revise MOS to use BCE/CE by default and to reserve BC/AD for topics in which those are especially appropriate (biblical and Christian church matters, and the history of Christendom before the modern era, including its interactions, e.g. the Crusades, with neighboring cultures). Whenever I encounter BC/AD used in articles that are not within the appropriate purviews (i.e. "there are reasons specific to [the article's] content" for a change), I change it to BCE/CE dating (especially in science articles, including archaeology), and am very rarely reverted on it. There appears to me to be a general editorial consensus on the matter, which we've simply not updated MOSNUM to include. I generally oppose substantive (versus clarifying) changes to MoS at this stage of its development, but we should continue to make those that tie off disputatious loose ends and which will curtail recurrent strife.
   — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  20:09, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Curiously, what makes you think the "Wednesday" comparison is false equivalence? Both are religiously-derived elements of the multicultural Western calendar, one just happens to originate within Christianity and the other European polytheism. One claims the third day of the week as Woden's day, the other claims the era beginning 2,016 years ago as "the year(s) of the Lord (Jesus)", I'm not seeing how these things aren't directly comparable? I understand that the reactions to them in terms of modern sensibilities are wildly different, but remember that the Quakers once "secularized" the weekdays out of concern for using pagan terminology as well, just as Jewish academics did with BCE and CE—it's just that one took off, the other didn't. The only true difference here is that Christianity is still widely extant as a world religion, European polytheisms are (or were, until the late 20th century) largely dead, and that has spurred differing reactions to each respective calendrical element. So as for your suggestion that we use BC/AD only for Christianity-related topics, that sounds as nonsensical to me as using only Norse pagan-derived terms in Norse pagan-related articles. — Crumpled Fire • contribs • 14:57, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

"Unacceptable date formats" table error

In Chrome on Mac OS, I'm seeing an error in the table (but have not gone and fixed it, in case others do not see it on other platforms).

The "Do not use a leading zero in month or day, except in all-numeric (yyyy-mm-dd) format" cell in the Comments column is spanning the "2007-4-15" example in the "Unacceptable" column, which is not an example of what the comment proscribes.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  19:02, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

It illustrates the except bit i.e. that in yyyy-mm-dd the mm and the dd should be zero-padded. EEng 19:58, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Very unintuitive, and better as a separate point about what to do, rather than an inference one has to tease out of an "except".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  20:19, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that it would be clearer to have separate explanatory comments:

09 June	9 June	Do not use a leading zero in month or day, except in all-numeric (yyyy-mm-dd) formats
June 09	June 9
2007-4-5	2007-04-05	Do not omit leading zeros in all-numeric (yyyy-mm-dd) formats

Peter coxhead (talk) 20:48, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

• For the consideration of my esteemed fellow editors, I've adapted a technique used in the units-of-measure table: [1]. EEng 21:14, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

For the sake of simpler English, may I suggest that the instructions be re-written as positive statements rather than negatives?

09 June	9 June	Remove leading zeros in date formats that have months written out as words.
June 09	June 9
2007-4-5	2007-04-05	Include leading zeros in all-numeric (yyyy-mm-dd) date formats

Rhialto (talk) 21:28, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

That's inconsistent with the rest of the table. This is the "naughties" table. EEng 22:04, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

The "naughties" table. Love it! ;o)   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 06:37, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Or in French, Le tableau de neau-neaux. EEng 07:09, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm quite sure Thatcher would have said Le tableau de neau-neau-neaux. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 08:55, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Strong national ties question

I did a search through the MOS talk archives. I can't say I read through every thread, but I have not yet seen a clear explanation of "strong national ties". It seems like I regularly see people act as though any person, place, thing, event, idea, company, etc. that was born, formed, created, invented, or otherwise primarily existed in a given country has "strong national ties" to that country such that WP:DATERET does not apply. "Strong national ties" suggests it's also possible to have "weak national ties" or "moderate national ties" that would not be sufficient to change the date format on the basis of such ties. I would not say that being born in the United States gives me "strong national ties" to the United States, for example. If I were also an employee of the Federal Government, if I were a Founding Father, or if I ran for President of the United States, then there would be "strong national ties". Similarly (at the risk of belaboring my point), a book that happens to be published here has no strong national ties unless, say, it's a book about American exceptionalism or the Constitution. I'm intentionally omitting the specific examples that led me to ask this question, since I'm looking for best practices rather than dispute resolution. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 18:17, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

One thing I can address is that place of birth gives strong ties for the purposes of this particular convention. I may or may not agree with it, but when wielded by nationalistic types, it's pretty unassailable. Primergrey (talk) 19:12, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm not being flip when I say that we might not need a clear explanation, absent evidence that editor time is being wasted arguing this question on individual articles. EEng 19:14, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

So my question is whether this has been clarified. The implication here is that the answer is no. I haven't proposed anything such that digging up diffs to provide evidence would be sensible, but I also would be surprised if most of the regulars on this page had not seen disputes concerning the "strong" in "strong national ties". How about I rephrase: why is "strong" there at all? It seems like it's typically taken to mean any national ties, and when there are ties to multiple nations then deferring to the stronger of them. If there's such a thing as "strong national ties", then, as I said, there must be a "[less-than-strong] national tie" that doesn't qualify for the purposes of changing date format (or, I imagine, ENGVAR, etc.). Absent competing claims, if strength of the national tie doesn't matter, that seems awfully unclear (the kind of unclear that indeed saps editor time). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 20:30, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

I think you're right that, in practice, it reads "...strong[est] national ties". I also agree that it probably does sponge a lot of time, but if that time is spent in a "which ties are strongest" debate, it falls into a concensus-reaching realm. Which is positive. Primergrey (talk) 20:41, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

My view is that "national ties" is a special case, and should be used only when the ties are clear. Biographies, places, legal issues specific to a country, that sort of thing. For example Kurt Gödel would have American ties because he was a US citizen, but Gödel's incompleteness theorems does not inherit the ties and is governed under WP:RETAIN.

I do think, though, that a bio of a person who was born in and lived as a citizen of an English-speaking country ordinarily does have strong national ties. Persons from non-English-speaking countries, not so much. A special case is someone who was, say, born in the UK and moved to the US, or vice versa — in those cases, I would say the ties are unclear, and we should fall back to RETAIN. --Trovatore (talk) 22:16, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

@Primergrey, EEng, and Trovatore: Thoughts on Lucien Conein who was born in France, settled in US at age 5, briefly returned to France at the outset of WWII, then served in US military and government? The ties seem stronger to US, but wondering what others think. -Location (talk) 03:08, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

I believe we have a team of rabbis for questions like this. EEng 03:16, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Feel free to point me in that direction. Thanks! -Location (talk) 03:48, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

My take: France is not an English-speaking country, so it doesn't enter into the equation. Conein was apparently an American citizen and lived most of his life either in the States or working for the US government.

So I would say the article plausibly has strong US ties, not the strongest I've ever seen, but not a stretch either. However, if it were clearly written in British English and that was not a recent change, I'd leave it be. --Trovatore (talk) 08:55, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

That was my initial interpretation reading MOS:DATETIES, too, but I wasn't sure if there was a rule for subjects tied to non-English speaking countries that place date before Month. Thanks for the feedback! -Location (talk) 13:56, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Date ranges and commas in prose

Here's the sentence in question from the article Toronto Maple Leafs:

Between October 17, 1992, and October 15, 2016, the Maple Leafs took a unique approach to retired numbers.

The general rule is that, with that date format, there is always a comma after the year. There's no exception to that in a range spelled out with "and" instead of a dash, is there? —C.Fred (talk) 20:11, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm going to make a secret confession to you, C. Fred -- don't tell anyone: This comma-after-year obsession is the one and only bit of MOS I intentionally ignore. Except in a few situations (e.g. setting off nonrestrictive clauses) most comma placement is a matter of rhythm and cadence only – nothing to do with grammar or correctness. In your case I'd write:

Between October 17, 1992 and October 15, 2016, the Maple Leafs took...

To be clear, if we were using DMY dates, I'd recommend:

Between 17 October 1992 and 15 October 2016, the Maple Leafs took...

Just to really rankle the rigid-rule crowd, I'll even say that I'd write:

After 2016 the Maple Leafs took...

For the intermediate case, I might write either of the following

After October 17, 1992, the Maple Leafs took...

After October 17, 1992 the Maple Leafs took...

depending on the pacing of the rest of the sentence and the surrounding text.

If no one's arguing with you about this, I suggest you just do what feels best (and see User:EEng#Why_every_goddam_thing_needn.27t_be_micromanaged_in_a_rule). Remember, don't tell anyone what I said. EEng 20:28, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Deprication of ordinals

Is there a credible rationale for why ordinals, e.g. the 1st of November, etc., are deprecated; and if there is, is it worth inclusion in the article? Graham.Fountain | Talk 10:17, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Most manuals of style, including Chicago and MLA, say not to do it. Grammar Girl has an explanation here: [2] Kendall-K1 (talk) 03:28, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Actually, that example doesn't explain why, only saying that it should be spoken and written differently, not why each is correct in its context. And the article isn't even clearly against the use of ordinals in all situations, stating the following:

'The instance in which it is OK to use an ordinal number is when you are writing the 1st of January, because you are placing the day in a series: of all the days in January, this day is the first. For example, your invitations could say, “Please join us for a party on the first of January.” In that case, it's correct to use the ordinal number, first.'

However, that doesn’t cover why it shouldn’t be the fifth [day] of January, or any other ordinal. Arguably, in the British format, they are always ordinals, which is why they are always spoken as such.

As to MoSs, neither ‘'Hart's rules’' nor ‘'The Oxford Guide’' are of any help on why it is what it is, i.e. the disparity between written and spoken forms. Just that it is. Hart's may be a bit of help, in suggesting that written ranges should always be expressed in the minimum number of characters, i.e. 1841-5 for 1841 to 1845, etc.

But, the question is, why is there this disparity between written as spoken forms? If it is only, as might be inferred from Hart’s comment on minimizing the character count, to save ink and paper, then the next question would be why this applies to an electronic format like Wikipedia, where the cost per character is essentially irrelevant? It’s not as though the inclusions of st, th, or rd would slow or distract the reader who is unaffected by ridged notions of style.

Graham.Fountain | Talk 09:32, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

A number of times I have had trouble distinguishing 1st (first) and lst (common abbreviation of last) - especially in some fonts where 1 and lower-case L are pixel perfect identical. Not a full or authoritative answer but certainly something that has annoyed me in the past.  Stepho  talk  10:16, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Anyone who writes lst for "last" should have his head examined. EEng 11:13, 1 August 2017 (UTC)→

I don't think it's about the (pointless) effort to save characters -- it's about clarity. Even when directly quoting a verbal speech, we don't write "...cost three hundred dollars", but "...cost $300", even though that makes the "dollars" appear out of the spoken order. We do this to make it quicker and easier for the reader to understand, even if that ignores a technical detail of quoting accuracy. Does adding ordinals in dates make things easier to read? I don't see how. "31st August" just adds a couple letters of clutter over "31 August"; if reading this out loud, I'd bet most people would say it the same either way. Numerals are preferred over spelling out numbers for a reason. That same reasoning should discourage inserting character hints of ordinals in dates, where they are assumed to be ordinals anyway.

I'm not sure that means our MOS should banish these ordinals, but I think it's one argument to do so. --A D Monroe III (talk) 17:27, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

And I'm not sure there isn't almost necessarily a tension between style and clarity: one man's clutter is another man's ornamentation.

I think another point is, which of these causes the man on the Clapham omnibus (unaffected, as I assume him to be, by ridgid notions of style) to pause longest (albeit only ever minutely), and go (at some subconscious level) "Oh! It means 'the first of August'." ( I assume for the 'man on the Staten Island Ferry' that's "... 'August first'.",): "1 August" or "1st August" {or even "the 1st of August"} ("August 1" or "August 1st" on the ferry)?

The overarching question is, whether there's a real need to mandate a specific wikistyle for this, or whether there might be room for the personal taste and style of the contributor? I don't think putting "photographs... taken on 1 November 1977" is better, in any quantifiable way, than "photographs... taken on the 1st of November 1977". Indeed, I personaly think the former looks ugly in comparison, and stops me 'dead in my tracks', as it were.

Graham.Fountain | Talk 09:33, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Editor claims following the Manual of Style is "POV pushing"

Hi, everyone. This afternoon I came across this extraordinary dialogue:

Vote (X) for Change socking again

User:Vote (X) for Change has recently (2017-04-14) used an IP to push his POV at Hebrew calendar just after the 3-month semi-protection expired. The new IP is 80.44.91.91 (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • blacklist hits • AbuseLog • what links to user page • COIBot • Spamcheck • count • block log • x-wiki • Edit filter search • WHOIS • RDNS • tracert • robtex.com • StopForumSpam • Google • AboutUs • Project HoneyPot). Luis150902 (talk | contribs) 06:58, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

What happened

• 2017-04-14 17:39: IP pushed the POV of the sockpuppeteer with the edit summary (Apply Manual of Style).
• 2017-04-14 18:18: StevenJ81 (talk · contribs · count · logs · email) reverted the IP.
• 2017-04-14 20:07: I reported the IP at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Vote (X) for Change/Archive#14 April 2017.
• 2017-04-14 20:10: NeilN (talk · contribs · count · logs · email) blocked the IP for 31 hours with the block summary (Block evasion).
• 2017-04-14 20:11: I posted at the talk page of the admin that semi-protected the page (User talk:Favonian). I requested Favonian to block the IP range the sockpuppeteer uses most for its POV pushing (80.44.88.0/22) and/or semi-protect the page again.
• 2017-04-14 20:18: Favonian replied saying that a rangeblock was infeasible and that he was happy to renew the semi-protection.
• 2017-04-14 20:20: Favonian (talk · contribs · count · logs · email) semi-protected Hebrew calendar for another 6 months.

Evidence is above. Luis150902 (talk | contribs) 06:58, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

The Manual of Style says in clear terms not to abbreviate the names of the months. I checked for more exchanges and found something unbelievable:

User:Luis150902

• Luis150902 (t · th · c · del · cross-wiki · SUL · edit counter · pages created (xtools · sigma) · non-automated edits · BLP edits · undos · manual reverts · rollbacks · logs ^{(blocks · rights · moves)} · rfar · spi · cci) (assign permissions)^{(acc · ap · ev · fm · mms · npr · pm · pc · rb · te)}

:Hello, I am User:Luis150902, registered since 2015-09-02 (1 year, 4 months and 17 days) and made 1220 edits. I've reverted lots of vandalism and not being a reviewer tempts me to revert every edit done by an IP or a new user in pages with pending changes protection. This is not a good practice, per Wikipedia:Not every IP is a vandal. I almost always leave an edit summary and use advanced words and expressions ("vandalism", "BLP", "WP:BLPPROD", "unsourced material", "unnotable", etc...). Additionally, I apply the same level of expertise via editing using my IP (using expressions like "Reverted vandalism" (example) "unnotable subject" (example) and "unsourced material" (example) in edit summaries) (Contribs of my IPs: current, former IP #2, former IP #1). The "damaging" edit in my IP history was improving a redirect. I'm requesting the pending changes reviewer right because of my experience (notably in reverting vandalism and removing unsourced material) and my extensive track record of mainspace edits. Luis150902 (talk | contribs) 09:59, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm a little confused as to how PC protection tempts you to "revert every edit done by an IP." Could you elaborate on that point? – Juliancolton | ^Talk 15:40, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

There is the pending changes backlog, that is tempting to clear, and the only way to remove pending changes from the backlog while not being a reviewer is to revert the page to the accepted version (this means reverting all pending changes). Since all IP edits become pending until reviewed, this tempts me to revert all those edits. Luis150902 (talk | contribs) 15:47, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

That sort of impatience doesn't make me very comfortable. I'm currently leaning toward {{notdone}} but I'll defer to another admin. – Juliancolton | ^Talk 15:53, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

 Not doneI'm afraid I agree, if this si the approach you feel compelled to take, clearing the backlog prioritized over doing the right thing, I don't think you are ready for any sort of advanced permission. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:52, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Something tells me that this editor is WP:NOTHERE to build an encyclopaedia. 213.123.194.188 (talk) 16:32, 12 August 2017 (UTC)