Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers

Migrating Chronological Items from WP:MOS

On the WP:MOS page I proposed reducing the section Chronological items to a short paragraph that would serve as an introduction to the corresponding section in this article, much as I did with Units of measure and as other did with Geographical names. I have identified four items, each of a few sentences in the WP:MOS article that do not appear in this article. Three are non-contraversial insofar as they do not contradict anything here, but one might need some discussion. Does anybody have any objection to me cutting and pasting the three non-contraversial items into this article without further discussion and to open up discussion about the fourth here? Martinvl (talk) 11:46, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

This is premature. The matter is under discussion at WT:MOS, where there's concern at lopping off important and much-needed advice to editors from a centralised location. The first job, before even thinking about rationalising MOSNUM and MOS, is to harmonise the sections that have diverged. Tony (talk) 14:23, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Tony, my request was to do the harmonisation. Martinvl (talk) 15:36, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah, it's quite a big job, and where there are inconsistencies, both versions and the proposed compromise or fix should be specified on both talk pages (or at least a link from one of them to the other). I did this for Currencies a month or two ago. Tony (talk) 15:48, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

I identified four items in WP:MOS that are not in WP:MOSNUM. Three are non-contraversial, so I have migrated them. I will open up a discussion on the fourth later. Once the issues in the fourth have been resolved, the calendar items in WP:MOS will be a subset of those in WP:MOSNUM. Martinvl (talk) 12:26, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Stylistical adjectival parenthetical imperial-metrical hyphenational insertions

"Avoid inconsistent usage. Write a 600-metre (2,000 ft) hill with a 650-metre (2,100 ft) hill"

And yet the parentheticals are non-hyphenational. In the above example I would 2000-ft hill as "two thousand foot hill" and "(2000 ft) hill" as two thousand feet hill" which is clearly(?) wrong.

(Brief) Comments? Rich Farmbrough, 13:42, 10 October 2010 (UTC).

ISO says no hyphen if the symbol (abbreviation) is used. We have followed that for a long time. Tony (talk) 06:15, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Tony is correct; that’s the convention observed in all good technical writing. Hyphens never separate a unit value and its unit symbol. The ISO seldom pulls new ideas out of their butt; they generally merely sanctify and publish best existing practices—in this case, writing practices and proper sentence structure and punctuation. And when the ISO does pull ideas out of their butt and tell the world “Adopt this new way,” the idea sometimes falls on flat on its face.

Meters can be units of length or they can be gauges one installs into a control panel. Feet can be units roughly a third of a meter long or something attached below one's ankle. Yards can be units or something one grows grass on. There can be bridges for cars, and there are footbridges. There can be foothills. Ergo, when a measure is being used as modifier, “We have 200-foot bridges” is perfectly distinct from “We have 200 footbridges”. When the measure is used as a modifier, the hyphen nails down meaning and avoids having the readers’ eyes double back because of brief confusion. And rigorously adhering to the hyphenation practice helps the eye to parse occurrences where the expression is not being used as a modifier, like “We have 200 yard sales.” This hyphenation practice holds true for unusual units that don’t look like something else, like “radian” because our minds are accustomed to the convention. So it’s “A two-radian arc segment.” The need to clarify disappears with unit symbols like “ft”, “m”, “yd”. In fact, none of the SI’s unit symbols look like words (although “mol” looks a bit like “mole”). And the common U.S. Customary unit symbols generally don’t look like words either.

To state the obvious: a parenthetical like (2000 ft) is not a modifier and is unambiguous. And, IMO, “2000-ft hill” and “2000 ft hill” are both examples of poor writing; use the spelled out unit of measure with the hyphen. Unit symbols should never be used in a modifier for regular prose. To ensure we are all on the same wavelength, “The building had a height of 200 feet” does not have the “200 feet” being used as a modifier and therefore does not get the hyphen. Greg L (talk) 14:17, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

I would largely endorse Greg's comments above, but I feel I must point out that while "meter" has those two meanings, "metre" has only one. Further, the US Customary units symbols include the "in", which has tremendous potential for causing confusion. It is almost always better to spend the extra two characters and write out "inch" in full.LeadSongDog come howl! 20:58, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

(*Phew*) I’m glad I remembered to write “generally don’t”. As for metre, I’m not so sure: “A short fire broke out in two electrical metre-boxes at a building of Shankar, Dhaka on Saturday afternoon and (from Canadian woodworking) In electrical terms this is normally measured in watts per second or kilowatts per hour ( KWH as seen on the electrical metre). I’ve seen the same thing happen with the word “gauge” vs. “gage.” In the U.S. differential pressure relative to atmospheric is “gage” pressure (pounds per square inch-gage, or psi-g) because the instruments are “gauges.” In the U.K., it tends to be the reverse because the instruments are pressure gages; thus, kilopascals-gauge or kPa-gauge.” But the trend isn’t perfectly consistent within a country or even within a particular industry (so I go with the practices of the largest world-wide manufacturers of pressure transducers). Greg L (talk) 22:16, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments, I found the BIPM(?) document which says (to summarise) "hyphens for adjectives, except when abbreviating units" - it even - almost apologetically - says that using them is the "normal rules of grammar". Not that we follow ISO as Mosnum itself proudly dictates. I also agree with the point about binding adjectival phrases where it avoids ambiguity (the puns are not necessary - 2 metre rules - but relevant) , although I note there is a Germanic tendency towards compound words - spaces to hyphens, hyphens to conjunction - that I find un-necessary, and in some cases undesirable. In the present case I am fairly decided that the correct way to go is (although I'm not sure it's important enough for the MOS) "hyphenate and spell out adjectival uses". Rich Farmbrough, 10:28, 13 October 2010 (UTC).

It depends. You'd prefer "10-inch widget" to "10 in widget" and so do I, but when you get to "7 TeV collision" vs "7-teraelectronvolt collision""250 km/h winds" vs "150-kilometre-per-hour winds" I'd go with the former. A. di M. (talk) 13:18, 13 October 2010 (UTC) (amended at 10:43, 14 October 2010 (UTC))

I absolutely agree A. di M. But note that such a sentence would (should) only be found in a highly scientifically oriented article here on Wikipedia. If such a unit of measure was to find itself being used in an article truly directed to a truly general-interest readership, it would be expanded to make it more accessible and revised in structure, such as this: “Fermilab was the first accelerator capable of collisions with particle energies of one trillion electron‑volts (1 TeV).” Clearly we are now goosing butterflies with regard to best writing practices. Far too many of our technically oriented articles today have the equivalent of “7 TeV collisions” on the very first occurrence in the lede, where the writer walked away thinking he had done his wikipedian duty of “building the web” and looking way-cool by using a *sciency* unit symbol that is blue so a reader must (*sigh*) and click the link just to learn how you pronounce its components. Greg L (talk) 13:44, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

I just meant to give an example of a very long unit name. I've replaced it. A. di M. (talk) 10:43, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree with you that unit symbols that are common in daily life, like km/hr (and mph in the U.S.) are so terribly familiar to a general-interest readership that they don’t need to be spelled out. “Investigators concluded he was driving at over 130 mph before hitting the tree” looks natural and so does one with the measure used as a modifier: “The storm, packing 75 mph winds by late evening, now qualified as a hurricane.” I’m not sure how the AP and The New York Times handle this, but I’m quite sure I would sail right over such constructions where non-spelled-out unit symbols on the first occurrence—even when they were being used as a modifier. For one thing, the unit symbols in the two examples I used here are not only well recognized, they can’t be confused with other words; ergo zero reason to spell out the full unit of measure and add the hyphen for the modifier. Greg L (talk) 19:24, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I think that would be true were not Wikipedia an international encyclop[a]edia (cf. the characterization of USA Today, a national newspaper which has no single home-town, as "News from Nowhere"). Mph or km² make perfect sense on first sight to a regular reader of, respectively, the Houston Chronicle or Le Monde, but may need explanation to those who normally read the other paper. (And blue links or Wiktionary links to units are very cumbersome to use for the 99.5%+ of our readers who aren't registered editors who've enabled both JavaScript and WP:navigation popups.) If, as an outsider, you're reading the Buenos Aires Herald, The Rand Daily Mail, Arab News, The Jerusalem Post, China Daily, The Times of India, or The New Zealand Herald, you know you're visiting someone else's home and expect to encounter some untranslated words and terms; that shouldn't be true of Wikipedia. —— Shakescene (talk) 20:34, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Context and ‘understanding your readership and writing for them’ is all important. If the article is on something like Porsche 911, it is perfectly appropriate to not belabor the article with “miles per hour” and “kilometers per hour” on the first occurrence because the symbol is transparent and familiar to virtually all the readership coming there. “Porsche 911” is the first article I guessed would be observing this practice and, lo and behold, that proved true. You are welcome to wade in and suggest that those automotive writers don’t understand proper practices when writing for an automotive readership. Methinks it will be an uphill battle. I also, just now guessed “Autobahn” would also not encumber its article as you seem to suggest. I guessed right.

As for your examples mentioning “China Daily” and its “we are the world” thrust; there are scores of Wikipedias in languages other than English. We write for readers whose first language is English. If we wrote otherwise, our articles would look like Simple English.Wikipedia. Oh, BTW, that link to “Simple English Wikipedia” is to the “Autobahn” article. Even there, they skip spelling out such familiar units of measure because the readers are assumed to be literate and have seen a speed-limit sign if they are actually interested in the Autobahn. Greg L (talk) 20:09, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

So what IS the deal with birth/death locations in the opening?

An editor has replaced "John Smith (January 0, 0000, Somecity, Somecountry - January 0, 0000, Somecity, Somecountry)" with "John Smith (January 0, 0000 - January 0, 0000)" and moved the birth and death locations to the body of the article, with an edit summary of "WP:MOSDATE". (There is no infobox in this case.)

So which of these is correct:

• This is indeed per WP:MOSDATE (in which case the changes should or indeed must stay), or
• It is just his personal preference (in which case the edit can be reverted, and the editor advised to not incorrectly cite MOSDATE to justify his personal preference)?

Apparently, MOS:DOB used to say "Locations of birth and death are given subsequently rather than being entangled with the dates." However, it doesn't say this anymore.

On the other hand, at MOS:DOB it says "At the start of an article on an individual, his or her dates of birth and death are provided..." and the main example given is "Charles Darwin (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was a British..." (no locations given). It doesn't state ""At the start of an article on an individual, only his or her dates of birth and death are provided...", but it would be possible to infer this from the the example. (But if it is policy, why is it not stated but rather left for us to infer?)

So what it is? I'm not asking what it should be or what one personally prefers, but whether another editor can properly change with an unassailable cite of MOSDATE.

((There are some discussions of the matter at these places: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/Archive 85#Use of place of birth/death and Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/Archive 124#Birthplace in opening and Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/Archive 127#Dates and places of birth) Herostratus (talk) 04:46, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

IMO it should be handled case by case. IIRC, someone argued that the town of birth is not always so relevant to someone's life as to deserve a mention in the first sentence (and I agree), but then it is even rarer for the month and day of birth to be relevant enough and yet I don't remember anyone suggesting that normally only the year should be provided. (Personally, in over 60% of the cases I'd say (19xx, Town, Country–20xx, Othertown, Othercountry) or (born 19xx in Town, Country).)A. di M. (talk) 13:21, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

I think the consensus was "it all depends", so maybe there should be something that indicates to an editor that just because a place of birth & death is or is not shown in one biographical article doesn't require following the same practice in the piece that he or she is writing or editing. However, I don't know how many editors would consult the Manual of Style, or know where to look. —— Shakescene (talk) 13:30, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Given no rule to the contrary, my personal preference is put only the dates in the parenthetical comment; it's far easier to read. To pacify those that want easy access to the place of birth and death, why not add an appropriate person infobox that includes the appropriate information? Those things are appropriate to an infobox; adding them as parenthetical comments in the first line of the lead seems to be tantamount to a list of trivia to me, and we don't like those... // ⌘macwhiz (talk) 20:50, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

It probably does all depend on context, but usually it is ungainly and cluttered to squash full dates and locations within parentheses right at the opening. Tony (talk) 00:55, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it's something that struck me reading professional biographies, that start with the birth place and date of the subjects grand-parents, or the exact time of birth - these things occupationally summon an image, or might be considered making a researched fact widely available, but in general they are irrelevant to the story and would be better relegated to a footnote, and if you read several biographies in a row, come across as as amateurish as the geographical texts that begin "XXXX is a city of contrasts" - and there are many. Rich Farmbrough, 10:40, 13 October 2010 (UTC).

I would be inclined to say: neither. The style isn't in MOSDATE, so it can be discussed. The editor should just be told "that's not in MOSDATE any more" not "advised to not incorrectly cite MOSDATE to justify his personal preference" - this might appear rather short on good faith. Rich Farmbrough, 10:33, 13 October 2010 (UTC).

Oh goodness no, I wouldn't put it like to the other editor. I was just being succinct, here. Herostratus (talk) 17:01, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

I still say just put the years in the lead, since the people that want birth and death details in the lead have not come up with any good reasons to have an exception to the Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lead section) guidelines. My compromise is to put the full dates and places in the infobox and the body of the article first, then use only years in the lead section. The lead needs to be a summary of the body and infobox, not the other way-round. At least that is WIkiedia convention. Older encyclopediae made a point of emphasizing exact dates and places perhaps, but they also took pains to use proper forms of address, like "the honourable", "the right reverend" "esquire" etc. which generally we do not require. The years give a quick summary and context, all that a lead section is supposed to do. And sylistically long parenthetical lists with dashes make readability worse. W Nowicki (talk) 16:25, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I fully agree. Compare the following:

George Washington (February 22, 1732 – December 14, 1799) was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775–1797, ...

George Washington (1732–1799) was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775–1797, leading the American victory ...

George Washington (born February 22, 1732 in Pope's Creek Estate, Westmoreland County, Virginia; died December 14, 1799 in Westmoreland County, Virginia) ...

The first is what we have in the article George Washington right now (Wikipedia's standard convention for biographies), as seen from Google. The other two are approximations to the Google snippets we would get with the two major alternatives. I think the second line is superior and the third is the worst of the lot. We don't need to prove that we are a serious encyclopedia by using an old-fashioned but impractical convention. We are already encyclopedia #1. It is our job to innovate. Our articles have lead sections (many if not most encyclopedias don't), and that makes certain changes necessary. This is one of them. Hans Adler 16:59, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't fully agree; dates should not be removed from the lede unless they are both in the infobox and in the body. If that's done, although I still think the dates should be in the lede, I wouldn't object to their removal.

However, I don't think the place should be in the lede unless important; if, for example, the person was executed, then the place of execution probably should be in the lede.

In either case, this article WP:MOSDATE is not the appropriate guideline to cover places. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:13, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Arthur. Readers routinely skip sidebars and infoboxes. So any key information that is mentioned in a photo caption or sidebar (like an infobox) may (should?) be duplicated in the main body text if so desired; that includes linking the first occurrence of a word. 19:50, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

"Readers routinely skip sidebars and infoboxes.". --Walter Görlitz (talk) 20:58, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Technical writing 101. That’s all you’ll get. Sidebars, as our own article describes them, …often include small bits of information such as quotes, polls, lists, pictures, site tools, etc.. By definition, they aren’t intended to be part of linear body text. You may read to them first; others read them last (or not at all). Greg L (talk) 22:01, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree. (But I don't think that the day and month of birth and death constitute "key information" in most cases.) A. di M. (talk) 22:23, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Huh?? This thread started out as one of birth and death locations. Now, the trouble with infoboxes is they often don’t have the information I seek. I would have expected that the infoboxes for cars like Porche 911 would list “Top speed” but it doesn’t. If the article is a biography, including birth and death dates in the first sentence of the lede are standard practices for all encyclopedias. Why would we depart from this convention? Because that information is in the infobox? Is that what this is about now? If so, I very much disagree.

For instance, our ‘George Washington’ article says this:

George Washington (February 22, 1732 – December 14, 1799) was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775–1797…

Are you suggesting that we abandon this practice? Greg L (talk) 23:31, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

I certainly would. "February 22" and "December 14" are of minor importance;

George Washington (1732–1799) was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775–1797…

is much better. His dates (and places) of birth and death would of course come later in the article. -- Hoary (talk) 23:50, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

That seems very sensible. Citing just the years is entirely consistent with the summary register of a lead, and avoids the ugly clutter of the full number/spacing tragedy. Surely the dates appear later in the detailed sections. Tony (talk) 00:52, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

To clarify, I do agree with above that any details in the infobox or caption must be in the body of the text too. The place I do not think they are required is in the lead section if they are already in both box and body. And to answer the question as to why we are different than many (not all, I bet one could find one that does not) printed encyclopediae that put all sorts of details in parentheses: Yes, it is because we have infoboxes! That seems exactly what infoboxes are for. No need to a bot or massive sweep, just allow the cleaner style in the lead since it is a minor issue IMO. For example, do it when adding infoboxes to a previsouly infoboxless article. W Nowicki (talk) 02:42, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Oh. I didn’t read what you wrote carefully enough, A. di M. I agree that providing just the birth/death years in biographies {George Washington (1732–1799)} in the lede of the body text seems perfectly fine. (Hmmm… I like it alot.} Greg L (talk) 03:18, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes I don't have a problem with that either. Can we either 1) put this into the manual of style or 2) at least write this up as a short essay and make it a subpage of this page, so that people don't have to reargue this six months from now? Herostratus (talk) 06:34, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

In the particular cases of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, the exact days of their birth are significant to many people because, before the institution of the portmanteau Presidents Day, February 12 (Lincoln's Birthday) and February 22 (Washington's Birthday) were separately and specifically celebrated national holidays in the U.S. So it wouldn't surprise me if a casual reader would go to Abraham Lincoln just to check the date quickly after running across a literary or historical reference to Lincoln's Birthday. Washington presents the additional difficulty that on the day he was born, the calendar didn't say 22 February 1732, but 11 February 1731. (See a similar difficult at Alexander Kerensky.) —— Shakescene (talk) 12:35, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Straw poll

Could we have a show of hands for a recommendation (rather than compulsion) at MOSNUM that where birth and death dates appear elsewhere in an article, just the years be provided at the opening of the lead? (This would not apply to an infobox.) Compulsion would mean rendering many articles non-compliant, but a recommendation would make it ok for an editor to change without gaining consensus at the talk page first. The exception to this recommendation would be where the actual dates of birth or death are significant per se.

Links to this straw poll have been posted at WT:MOS and and have posted a notice at the Village Pump and Centralized discussion. Tony (talk) 03:37, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Examples

One of the things you want readers—especially students—to absorb about historical figures is where their lifespan fits into the scheme of things. I have enough trouble remembering the lifetimes of the major figures just in years. Which of the following "big picture" expressions of lifespan is more likely to be held in readers' minds, just where they're embarking on the topic at the outset of the lead summary? I've chosen two composer articles, but the principle goes for all bios.

1. Aaron Copland, a significant 20th-century composer: here and as it was. In the first, I've moved his full date of birth down to the opening of "Early life", where it fits nicely and complements the full date of his death, which was already in "Later life", just where you'd expect it.
2. JS Bach—the mess at the top has been an irritant for many years, worsened by the need to refer to the calendar change in Thuringia at the start of the 18th century. The proposed option is here; the previous version is here. The old-style calendar reference is now shifted from the very opening of the article to the start of the "Childhood (1685–1703)" section, without using the distracting small font size that I suppose was an attempt to minimise the clutter at the opening. Again, the date of death was already stated in the "Death (1750)" section. Tony (talk) 02:32, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
   ¶ Most of the leading clutter in J.S. Bach comes from the phonetic transcription that of course most readers can't understand even if it is neutral between their different accents. I know that's a different argument of equally-long standing, and I realize that how to pronounce "Bach" is a common and natural question for ordinary readers. On the other hand, another question of many ordinary, common readers is "when is Bach's birthday?" and others might well be "where exactly was he born?" (was he, for example, an Austrian?) and "where did he die?" (in England, like Handel? in a big German city? in the countryside?) —— Shakescene (talk) 06:59, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Your opinions

• Support Tony (talk) 08:00, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support for the reasons I have given above. Hans Adler 08:19, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support Dates of birth and death never have great relevance unless they are an observance (ie perhaps only in George Washington's case). Less clutter by minor information for the lede must be welcome. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 08:33, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support Messy opening to an article and can be provided in infobox and later in main article. Adabow (talk · contribs) 08:43, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support with very rare exceptions (e.g. the death date of Saint Patrick). A. di M. (talk) 09:21, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support, with the same caveats that Ohconfucius and A.di M. mention, that sometime, especially when it's a well-known date that has been memorialized, it may indeed be relevant. But that's case-by-case and should be decided on the article's talk page. Must be careful in the wording that no one uses it as a cudgel against any use of full dates, as well.oknazevad (talk) 10:58, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support, with Ohconfucius's and A. di M.'s caveats. I don't think that George Washington's birth and death dates are important enough to include in the opening of the lede, but St. Patrick's death date certainly is. Ozob (talk) 11:19, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support As the proposal is worded: where birth and death dates appear elsewhere in an article, just the years be provided at the opening. It is a simple recommendation that results in a clean-reading article. Greg L (talk) 13:05, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support. Birth and death day-month is very seldom important. If this is put back into the MOS, I would support something like "...except in particular exceptional cases, where there is a reason for including the month and day, and a cogent reason is given on the talk page" or something. (I am the person who started this thread, but I was not objecting to having birth/death year be the only info included, only to the lack of clarity.) Birth and death location is another matter, and more arguable in my opinion - a person's country of birth (not so much the city, usually) can be pretty important. But, overall, I am OK with an MOS that proscribes including the birth/death location either, in the interest of not cluttering up the lead sentence with parenthesized detail. After all, the info can go right into the second sentence or so, with better detail to boot. For instance "John Q. Somebody (born Somedate, Riga, Latvia...)" tells one story, while "Was born in Riga of ethnic German parents" or whatever tells another, and the first example is actually somewhat misleading. Herostratus (talk) 16:22, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support. Keep it simple. Lightmouse (talk) 18:05, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support. The lead is meant to be the summary and not contain every fact. Including the exact date and location details, adds undo emphasis to these items and moves the actual text on the individual further into the text. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:28, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose. WP is an encyclopaedia—not an advertising brochure that has to look tidy to sell the product. The day and month currently sit neatly in the lede in thousands of articles which means that readers have learnt that there is a consistent place to obtain that information (and the information is bracketed and easy to skip while scanning). I don't believe WP is improved by having inconsistencies between articles (e.g. if a reader wants to determine if someone was born early or late in a year, they would have to go looking through many paragraphs for what would be essentially a random placement—if there at all). Other respected publications have no problem including the day and month information (Grove does it). I would only support the removal of the day and month information if that information were to be contained in the infobox (as a consistent approach for readers), and not at a random point in the article. The proposal will also make it impossible for script to detect the precise dates of birth and death—something that at least has a chance if placed in the first brackets in the first sentence of an article). I feel that this proposal will lead to increased tension and debate on many, many pages.  HWV258.  19:25, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Funny, "(1912–2002)" rather than "(January 15, 1912 – August 31, 2002)" doesn't look like an advertising brochure to me. It has to look tidy for ease of reading and good organisation (lead vs. the more detailed sections), not because it's trying "to sell a product". Tony (talk) 02:06, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

• Support, because it will make the articles more readable, especially for biographies where one also needs to specify one or more alternative forms of the subject's name in a different language or writing system—which is also done parenthetically. However, I agree with HWV258 that we should also stress the suggestion to use an infobox as well, and that the infobox should be as precise as possible and use the appropriate templates to generate metadata. Failing that, we should point users toward instructions on how to encode the full birth/death dates as metadata manually. Yes, I know that many people would ignore such a suggestion, but if the extra link gets even a few people to do the right thing, it's still a worthwhile win. (For that matter, could we create a template that would take the birth/death dates in as precise a form as available, generate the desired parenthetical output, and still generate the needed metadata?) // ⌘macwhiz (talk) 20:09, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
• Strongly oppose. Discussion/proposal belongs at MOS:BIO. Relates directly to the first section there, i.e. what information is included not how it is formatted. _wjemather^bigissue 20:30, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Thanks. I just put a note there to bring the posse around. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:45, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
    • Since this seems like it going to stay here all I can say is that sometimes the bad ideas are just right there in front of you. It is long established practice to include birth and death dates as accurately as known in the opening paragraph and there is no reason to change other than a desire to provoke mass edit wars (we've seen those before and don't need them again). In any case it would do our readers great disservice to bury key information in the article body. As has already been stated, the infobox is not a substitute and these details should be as accessible as possible. _wjemather^bigissue 21:32, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose I believe that dates are very important information that should be included at the start of an article, and I sure as heck don't want people mechanically deleting them like was done with birth/death places. I also agree with Mclay below: Ideally, the lead could be a stand-alone summary, which includes the dates. Reywas92^Talk 03:39, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
• Weak Oppose Should be on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes the exact dates have particular historical significance; many times they do not particularly crowd the lead. --Cybercobra (talk) 04:17, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

  The proposal is not do ban them, only to discourage them when there's no good reason to put them in the first sentence. A. di M. (talk) 14:55, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

• Strong oppose. Full birth and death dates should always appear in the lead, as they do in any good encyclopaedia. They should not, in my opinion, appear elsewhere in the article, as this is completely unnecessary. Infoboxes should be a supplement (if used at all - I personally dislike the things, as I feel they are ugly and unbalance the article) - they should never, ever contain information that is not contained elsewhere and should never be the primary source of any piece of information in the article. -- Necrothesp (talk) 08:19, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
  • You mean that Johannes Kepler#Early years should start with "Johannes Kepler was born in 1571 at the ..." and the penultimate sentence of Johannes Kepler#Rudolphine Tables and his last years should be "He died in 1630 and was buried there; ..."? What's the point of that? Surely someone reading about the details of someone's birth of death is more likely, rather than less, to want to know the day and month, so the dates in the body of the article should be retained whether they're also in the lead or not. A. di M. (talk) 15:04, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
    • No, I mean that it should start "Johannes Kepler was born in the Free Imperial City of Weil der Stadt..." The dates are already in the lead and don't need repeating ad infinitem, which is a trend that has, in my experience, begun fairly recently on Wikipedia. People are generally intelligent enough not to need spoon-feeding. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:13, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
      • Well, lead sections are supposed to be a summary of the rest of the article, so they should not contain detail not given later. So, giving the year for every event in Johannes Kepler#Rudolphine Tables and his last years except the death on the ground that the death date was already given umpteen screenfuls before would look quite weird to me. A. di M. (talk) 18:03, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose. My comment above was to suggest it should be allowable not to have the dates of birth and death in the parenthetical section of the first sentence, even they appear both in the body and and infobox; I still think they should occur in the parenthetical section, or should be linked in the body (contrary to current guidelines.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 08:57, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose – the first paragraph is meant to be a summary of the article. An reader should be able to read the summary and know all the basic information. Birth and death dates are essential information about a person and do no harm sitting in brackets after the persons name. McLerristarr / Mclay1 15:48, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

We all agree that the lead should be a summary of the article, every single one of us. The question is whether the lead should be a brief and readable SUMMARY that gets users on target or an all-inclusive summary that includes mention of every significant tidbit. Give me clean, fast, short, concise leads over meandering messes that say too much every time. See the lead for Communist Party USA for an example of a technically by-the-book, practically atrocity of a lead... Giving the years alone enables readers to know whether they are looking at the right John Smith at a glance and his general era. If they want to know what day and where he died, that's the place for the main article. The sole rationale that advocates of the current Officially Specified Cluttered Format seem to tout (see below) is "that's what other encyclopedias do." Show me just one paper encyclopedia with a short summary lead, followed by a table of contents, followed by a main article and I might agree with ya... Carrite (talk) 15:30, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

• Support. With caveat as stated above, the details should go in the infobox and body, and only then removed from the lead. Years are certainly a summary, so do not understand the previous comment at all. The proposal is not to eliminate the dates totally from the lead, just cut down specific dates to two mentions instead of three. And yes, belongs in the bio style guide. W Nowicki (talk) 15:51, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support. One of the main functions of a lead is to summarise the article without unnecessary detail. In most cases the day/month is detail and the year a sufficient summary, so the default recommendation should be to discourage them. Where the day/month are significant, then of course that is an justifiable exception. Although it's out of scope here, I'd venture in an analogous way that the exact location is usually detail, while the nationality is summary, so the same would apply. For what it's worth, I certainly do not think it is appropriate to have information in the lead that is not contained in the body of the article. --RexxS (talk) 17:17, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
  • If location is detail that should not be included in the body paragraph, are you suggesting that, for example, the lead paragraph of John Lennon should not mention his birth in Liverpool? McLerristarr / Mclay1 17:22, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
• Comment – Just to clarify something here: does first paragraph mean just the first line or the entire first section before the contents? McLerristarr / Mclay1 17:24, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
  • The first paragraph is all the text before the first blank line, though IMO the problem is cramming too much stuff in the parentheses. A. di M. (talk) 18:03, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support: the first sentence should give the most important information about a person, and that is what that person did and in what period he lived, not on what days the person happened to be born and die. Of course, there may be individual cases where it is appropriate to give the dates. Ucucha 01:36, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose Dates of birth and death are at the top of the ubiquitous information about a person; they are bookmarks of the human condition; they are vitals like name, gender and profession, and so they loom large when we tell the story of a life. We ask that ideally leads be able to function as stand-alone documents that summarize the important aspects of a person's life, and we do so not just as an empty exercise in summarization, or style, but because people often read just the lead as a mini-article and stop there. I cannot imagine a good biography that does not provide these vitals, so if we truly mean that the lead should pass scrutiny as stand-alone, then this information must be included there.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:58, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Few of the biographies shorter than several tens of pages that I recall reading – let alone four-paragraph ones – give days and months for the birth and death dates. A. di M. (talk) 16:16, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
    • We must do our reading in alternate universes.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 17:41, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
• Comment – I often find birth and death dates are not referenced to citations; where they are cited adjacent to the first sentence to the lead, they often lead to clutter within the already busy parentheses in the lead section. Unless it's from an obit, it's extremely likely ever to have a single cite for both birth and death dates. So I think it's better to have all that detail in the body –. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:00, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
• Comment. There's nothing wrong with presenting significant detail like place of birth in the lead, but if a great deal of readers (not editors) say it reduces usability, let them have their way. There are two caveats that I'd like to see in the final decision - taking care of another round of "lamest MOS wars":

1. Editors who remove dates and places from the lead should check if they are clearly mentioned elsewhere in the text (not infobox) and, when necessary, carefully re-insert such info where appropriate.
2. Deletion of dates and places from the lead is not an excuse for the addition of an infobox. Infobox wars... been there. East of Borschov 06:37, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose: Keep dates of birth and death in the lead parenthesis, to the month and day. Locations, however, should appear later in the article. /ninly_(talk) 07:23, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Yes, agree with that 100%. Places of birth and death should be in the article, not the lead. -- Necrothesp (talk) 08:31, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose. This is basic information. If you want to remove superfluous info from the lead, it would be better to remove the full name of people from the lead and only introduce that in the body. I don't want the first thing in the article on Stephen Hawking to be that his middle name is William, nor do I believe that the fact that he is a fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce needs to be introduced so soon. Considering that we normally have such minor infotmation prominently in the lead, I don't think excluding the exact date of birth and date should be our priorities. Fram (talk) 08:47, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
  • I really don't think a person's full name is superfluous. Neither, in Britain, are their postnominal letters. -- Necrothesp (talk) 08:49, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
    • That's basically the problem. You believe that where someone is born shouldn't be in the lead, but that someone has the middle name X on his birth certificate should be, even though in many cases the first had a profound influence on his life and career, and the latter may be a totally irrelevant bit of trivia. Everyone has his preferences, opinions, things that pique the interest or that are totally irrelevant to you. I don't see why the exact date of birth and death should be singled out. I could see the need for a total rethinking of what to put in the lead, or what to put in the first sentence of a lead, focusing solely on what was essential to the person (which would certainly be the commonly known name and the claim to notability (usually their job), and may include their years of birth and death, their nationality or other regional affiliation, and a few other things. It would usually not include little-known middle names, postnomials unrelated to their main notability, dates of birth and death, ancestry (X was a Y of Polish-Italian-German descent? X was a Y will suffice for the lead)). Such a discussion and rewrite of the MOs for the lead, I could perhaps support. But as it stands, I don't see the reason for removing this from the lead when so much other clutter is allowed (and even encouraged) in it. Fram (talk) 08:58, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
  • Do I understand you correctly? Do you oppose removing birth and death day and month where irrelevant (while keeping the years in), because you think irrelevant details about the name should also be removed? That seems rather odd to me. Hans Adler 13:05, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
    • If we agree that some less relevant info can or should be included in the lead (first sentence) anyway, then I believe that the exact dates of birth and death are a prime candidate for such inclusion, as they are a natural extension of the years (which everyone, I believe, agrees should be included). I can accept the position that no less relevant info should be included in the first sentence, and a discussion on that may be worthwhile. But I can also see the arguments to include some more trivial or less relevant info in the first sentence, and in that case, I think that these dates should be kept. What I can't support is the exclusion of the dates coupled with the inclusion of other material. I hope that clarifies my position on this. Fram (talk) 08:36, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
      • Thanks. That makes perfect sense. I saw this proposal, which initially looked like a case of snow, primarily as a way to get started about removing the lead clutter. I'm a bit worried that your nuanced argument won't be taken into consideration when people later argue that because of the strong opposition to removing the dates WP:LEAD can clearly not be enforced for such content. Hans Adler 09:03, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
• Supportissimo. For the great majority of notable people, the details of the birth or death aren't important to their notability. This is just clutter. The demand for consistency makes it worse, in view of all the people whose dates arguably need to be spelled out in both the Julian and the Gregorian calendar (and indeed in years with old versus present-day year-division). There's talk above of how any good encyclopedia consistently does this or that; I don't have any large biographical encyclopedia conveniently to hand, but to me it would be one whose articles provided such details as dates of birth and death but whose leads were crafted by and for thinking humans, rather than by robotic application of a handful of rules that prioritized consistency across articles on people as diverse as physicists, murderers, novelists, film directors, explorers, and pop crooners. -- Hoary (talk) 09:47, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose per Fram. People are used to this and expect it as both readers and editors; and in isolation it is not an improvement. I would support, as Fram suggested above, a wider rethink on what information should be excluded from leads unless it is shown to be significant - and as part of that, it might be OK to say that in many cases the exact dates are a distraction rather than helpful. Rd232 ^talk 11:07, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
  • But I'm a person, a reader, and an editor; and I am not used to it and indeed am irritated by it. Incidentally, I too would be happy to boot obscure matters of naming out of the lead. -- Hoary (talk) 11:39, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose I don't see a major change in flow, but I do see a lack of instant information. If I want to see a birthday, I look at the top and don't want to scroll down looking. Is this change OK sometimes? Yes, so do it on a case-by-case basis. But not always, please. How is this not important info, anyway? Can we exclude titles (OBE, etc.) too, as superfluous? What constitutes unimportant detail? I think presenting, in most cases, the specific dates at the beginning is helpful and relevant. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 12:57, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
  • How is this not important info, anyway? Because it's remarkably difficult to come up with examples for which the date of birth is significant. ("Oh, Mozart/Gesualdo/Ockeghem/Beethoven/Schoenberg/Bach/Zemlinsky was born in April/June/November?" Good grief, then no wonder he is/isn't performed much these days!") -- Hoary (talk) 13:25, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
    • Exactly. For illustration, let's take a few anonymous famous composers and experiment with various formats:

    A (born in Salzburg; died in Vienna) was an Austrian composer.

    B (born 17 December; died 26 March) was a German composer.

    C (born 31 March (O.S. 21 March) 1685 in Eisenach; died 28 July 1750 in Leipzig) was a composer.

    D (1685–1759) was a German-British composer.

    I know which format I prefer, and why. Hans Adler 14:45, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

    This is slightly disingenuous to say the least, since the normal format on Wikipedia at the moment is not any of these, but: E (31 March 1685 – 28 July 1750) was a German composer. This is the format I and others continue to support. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:59, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

    Me too. I, for one, consider that "E" conveys the most relevant information and is much faster for me to get that info from. I am truly interested in his birth date, not just the year. Being born in January vs. December is a pretty big difference time-wise. In addition, what do other encyclopedias do? Hey, look at Brittanica: we're not them, but I think the standard for encyclopedias is like what EB does, "(b. Jan. 27, 1756, Salzburg, Archbishopric of Salzburg [Austria]—d. Dec. 5, 1791, Vienna)". /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 19:42, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

    Apart from answering trivia questions in a pub quiz, I can't see any use for the exact date, nor the relevance of day and month to the subject's life and work. I could understand that John Lennon being born in Liverpool in 1940 would be relevant, but why "9 October"? --RexxS (talk) 22:33, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

    I think it's an important biographical fact. We should, by your reasoning, exclude orders of chivalry (because no one says that in daily speech), cities of birth (because everyone knows that the country is what matters), pronunciations (because very few people can understand IPA), middle names, and full birth names for people like Lady Gaga. Does having the date of birth in the lede hurt the lede that bad? Why make information that is relevant to the subject's life (because that's when it started!) be harder to find? This is an encyclopedia; it is for reference. If I want to look up Barack Obama's birthday for an essay or article I am writing, I will look to Wikipedia, as will most other readers, including a large number of professional journalists and such. That page takes a long time to load for me. I don't want to wait an extra 30 seconds to see the rest of the article when I can just wait 10 to see the first part of the lede, and know the birth date. In almost every case, I see no harm in leaving the full date of birth in the first sentence. It's not really unnecessary detail; we're giving basic facts but not going into minutes or seconds and whatnot. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 01:55, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose. For one it is more convenient to our readers to have it readily available. Secondly, it is important in contributing to the summing up of the article which is the lede's purpose and nearly all of the 800, 000 plus biographical articles have the birth and dates dates (not just years) in the lede. To change this policy like this would require what I perceive to be 800, 000 unnecessary changes. --Kumioko (talk) 15:08, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, but it would be more convenient for readers to have everything at the opening; that is just not practical. What goes there has to be rationed, and at the moment we are forced to put birthdays in at the very opening—no flexibility at all. "To change this policy like this would require what I perceive to be 800, 000 unnecessary changes." Well, no: at the top it clearly says that the new advice would be a recommendation, not a compulsion, specifically not to render 800,000 articles in breach. Tony (talk) 16:41, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

What? It's convenient to have basic info that one expects to see (AKA the birth date) and a summary of the subject. I expect to see the full birth date, so it is convenient if it is there. If it's not, I am inconvenienced. Or is it actually easier for me to have to wait for the page to load more and then search lower? Also, if this is a recommendation, how is it determined when this should occur? The main contributor's discretion? Will we need different consensus on every single page? I like them all the current way, and so do many others; should there be a massive edit war over a ... recommendation? /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 01:55, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

• Support - The lead is supposed to be a simple, concise summary of the expanded content in the article below. Yet the Official Style Guide specifies for expanded dates in the lead (which are often times not repeated in the article below, human nature being what it is...). This is nutty. Fortunately, the number of people who follow Official Style instead of unofficial Logical Style is a small minority. Carrite (talk) 15:31, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

←(e.c.) Response to Hans Adler: Agreed, most readers, if asked, would instantly go for the clean, simple one. What is it about birthdays that makes people want to put them right at the start? May as well give the day of the week they were born, or whether they were right- or left-handed, first-/last-born, brown/blue-eyed, right at the opening, then. Aside from my poor attempt at humour, birthdays are a more significant problem than those trivialities when it comes to the impact on the reader of historical lifespan—almost always a critical concern. Because days and months are expressed in numerals adjacent to the years, they really do damage the easy accessibility of information that enables a reader to conceptualise their place in history—that is, the years. Ask any schoolteacher, any professor, any journalist, what really matters. Birth and death dates are details that are much more suitable in the body of the text, where whole sections are typically devoted to "Early life" and "Later life". And the infobox, where there is one, will still announce the full dates, usually. Days and months should be trumpeted in the first second of reading an article only where they have modern anniversary implications (St. Patrick's Day, for example). The clutter has been a serious shortcoming of WP's bio articles, and it is high time we gave editors the option of allocating macro- and micro-details to the summary and the sections, respectively. Tony (talk) 15:09, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

You are not entitled to speak for "most readers," only for yourself. Edison (talk) 15:56, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, and please, can we stop this tiresome banging on about things being in infoboxes and therefore not needing to be in the lead. Infoboxes are not uncontroversial and many of us don't like their recent proliferation in the first place. In addition, who on earth has the right to decide what is an acceptable "modern anniversary" and what is not? St Patrick's Day means nothing to me. Indeed, it probably means nothing to most people outside Ireland and North America. -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:01, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the insistence on infoboxes here is annoying. For articles without infobox it should be enough if the dates appear in the text in the obvious locations. Hans Adler 16:07, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

I guess the reason some editors insist on this is related to the reason why so many articles begin with the silly "X refers to" pattern and have an etymology section that only deals with the title, even though articles are supposed to be about (often several related) concepts rather than words. People use dictionaries more often than encyclopedias, and even many encyclopedias are organised by words rather than topics. So this is what editors are used to. Hans Adler 16:07, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

• Strong oppose I expect to see the date of birth and death, and not just the year, at the beginning of a biography, consistent with paper encyclopedias and biographical dictionaries. If you don't care what Copeland's birthday was, then skip over it. Many articles do not have an infobox near the beginning. If there is such as easily accessible infobox, then just years would suffice. Edison (talk) 15:56, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
• Strong oppose An encyclopedia should have the full information regarding birth and death. Day and year are naturals but even month brings meaningful info. To mention an upcoming one. Harry Houdini's death on October 31, 1926 summons up its own connotations. Use of the year "1926" by itself does not. MarnetteD | Talk 17:07, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose: This is a real-world standard for biographies, there's no strong reason to step away from it MBelgrano (talk) 18:42, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support. I don't see any real advantage to putting the full date in the lead sentence. Keeping it simple makes the intro more readable, IMO. Kaldari (talk) 20:23, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose per Necrothesp and Wjemather, full dates but no places in the parentheses, i.e. restore the line "Locations of birth and death are given subsequently rather than being entangled with the dates." Tewapack (talk) 22:36, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose in that this argument over very few cases like Bach would result in losing birthdates and deathdates in very many cases to wherever in the article the latest haphazard editor put them (including the infobox). Even the O.S. cases like Bach and Washington are already easily standardized. There is a much worse problem with the hyperinclusive multiscript spellings of various articles that often present a reader with browser-breakers before he can even parse the first sentence, and thus a date-related proposal is a bit time-wasting. IMHO I saw a very reasonable suggestion that if there are several alternate spellings, that can be explained in the first section. In that case it makes sense, especially if alternate spellings are bolded as per guidance, but if birth and death are moved (deathdate has NO other easy-to-find location in any article except the sometime infobox) there is no quick way to determine even if WP knows about the deathdate. JJB 00:02, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support if the birth date is easy to find elsewhere, e.g. in the infobox or at the start of an "Early life" section. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 00:12, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose. Wikipedia needs guidelines to ensure consistency. This "straw poll" introduces subjective criteria for a "whatever goes" mentality. The introduction presents the clause: "The exception to this recommendation would be where the actual dates of birth or death are significant per se." This is highly subjective, potentially leading to much discord between editors. What is useful, important, or significant to one editor may not equate to the next. We need to maintain consistency, rather than set a precedent for revising policy, guidelines, and Manual of Style at the whim of any straw poll. Cindamuse (talk) 06:47, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
• Can't we all just get along? "Wikipedia needs guidelines to ensure consistency" is one opinion; "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" is another. We don't seem to have a consensus, and so I don't think we can mandate exactly what the material in the parenthesis following the person's name is. Let a hundred flowers bloom. As it stands, as far as I can tell, there is no prescription; that is the de facto policy. However, I think it's very important to make this clear. Lack of consistency is not a problem; lack of clarity is a problem and leads to long discussions such as this one (and this one, and this one and this one, and more in future if we don't pin this down now).

So how about replacing this:

At the start of an article on an individual, his or her dates of birth and death are provided. For example: "Charles Darwin (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was a British ..." En dashes are preceded by a non-breaking space, except between year-pairs when no spaces are used.

With this (or something like it):

Biographical articles should begin with the name of the person (bolded), an opening parenthesis, and a closing parenthesis. The parentheses must enclose the birth and death year, and may (at the author's discretion) enclose the birth and/or death day and month and birth and/or death location. For example: "Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882) was a British ..." or "Charles Darwin (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was a British ... or Charles Darwin (12 February 1809, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England – 19 April 1882, Downe, Kent, England) was a British ...". En dashes are preceded by a non-breaking space, except between year-pairs when no spaces are used. For living persons and persons where all the information is not known, see the examples below.

And this would also have to be put in WP:MOSBIO. Herostratus (talk) 14:44, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

• Comment. A lack of clarity leads to lack of consistency. There is most certainly a problem with a lack of consistency. If it were not so, there would be no need for this discussion. And yes, I agree, this discussion is taking place devoid of WP:MOSBIO, as well as WP:PEER. As such, it really holds little water outside of satisfying curious minds pertaining to style preferences. And please, I have seen nothing signifying "not getting along", outside of your "foolish, little minds" comment. Let's not go there. Maintain respect, while assuming good faith. Thanks. Cindamuse (talk) 15:51, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

• Comment – If the birth and death dates were removed from the lead, then you would have to go to the introduction for the birth date and search through the rest for the death date. That seems very inconvenient seeing as how birth and death dates are such basic information. I bet a lot of readers look at a biographical article just to find out the person's birth and death dates. We've got to remember that most people who read Wikipedia articles are just looking for some quick information. They do not want to trail through a large amount of text; if they have to do that, they'll look elsewhere on other websites. McLerristarr / Mclay1 15:23, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
  • People just looking for some quick information can find it in the infobox. That's what they are for. A. di M. (talk) 15:35, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
  • The lede paragraph of Millard Fillmore, for instance, is so full of trivia that it doesn't mention slavery or the Compromise of 1850. Those subjects explain Fillmore's importance much better than the exact date, not just the year, of his birth and death. Everything can't come first. Art LaPella (talk) 16:01, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
    • Agree with A. di M. and Art LaPella. Mclay1, when you say, "I bet a lot of readers look at a biographical article just to find out the person's birth and death dates", do you have any evidence for your punt? It's been pointed out a number of times above that the dates are inconsequential in defining the "big picture" summary that defines the role of the lead, and unhelpful to readers and students in extracting the critical lifespan in historical terms. Tony (talk) 16:06, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
• Support (assuming it applies to living people too). The proposed recommendation would be a positive development. Mentioning just the year does suit the lead's "big picture" role. The actual dates can be found immediately in the infobox if required. PL290 (talk) 18:23, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Reference style

If an article uses citation in the form

J. Wales (31 July 2008). "Main Page". Retrieved 2008-08-01.

where the publication dates are consistently distinguished in format from accessdates, is this a "breach" of this MOS guideline for "consistency"? Is it necessary to convert all such references to

J. Wales (2008-07-31). "Main Page". Retrieved 2008-08-01.

Some developed and even featured articles have citations in the former form, and have had so for years with stability. The intro to this guideline says: "If an article has been stable in a given style, it should not be converted without a style-independent reason." Comments? Gimmetoo (talk) 03:20, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand in what circumstances "2008-08-01" or "2008-08-01" would ever be used. They are only to be used in long lists and tables for conciseness and sorting, and constrained even then, is my understanding. (Because "2008-08-01" can be taken to mean "August 1, 2008" or "January 8, 2008".) Certainly to convert "31 July 2008" to "2008-07-31" in the case you describe would be an abomination. The person who is using "YYYY-MM-DD" for accessdates is making an error, although it's an error I wouldn't spend any time correcting. Since accessdates are technical convenience for readers and bots and are not really part of the ref, and are subject to change at any time, I wouldn't worry about making them match the real parts of the ref. This is my opinion. Herostratus (talk) 04:50, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't know if this opinion is correct, but our guideline against bare URL's is at WP:LINK#Link titles. Art LaPella (talk) 05:06, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Better to convert all dates to plain English. Mr Stephen (talk) 07:01, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Strongly agree with Mr Stephen. Tony (talk) 09:24, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I slightly disagree. I think YYYY-MM-DD dates are logical and easy to read, just not very human. I don't mind using that style for access dates, though I would object to its use in prose. I don't think that the citations need one consistent date style, but if they do then it should be something less robotic, like DD Month YYYY. (By the way, I've never seen anyone use YYYY-DD-MM; YYYY-MM-DD is completely standard (ISO standard, in fact), and there is no ambiguity, unlike for DD-MM-YYYY and MM-DD-YYYY dates.) Ozob (talk) 11:04, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Tony & Stephen that

J. Wales (31 July 2008). "Main Page". Retrieved 1 August 2008.

is preferable to the example with both publication and accessdate in ISO. But that's not the question I'm asking. The question here is whether, in references, the publication and accessdate can be consistently distinguished by format, or whether they must have the same format. There are quite a few articles where the publication dates are in dmy or mdy, and the accessdates are in iso. As an aside, there is no ambiguity in the iso accessdate in the example, even for someone unfamiliar with iso; reading the accessdate as January 8 puts it before the publication date, which is obviously wrong. Gimmetoo (talk) 13:20, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

• The question is related to the article Ursula Andress, where I was intending to make some accessibility improvements, but also spotted the mixture of 'dmy' and 'iso' formats, which I felt looked odd. As the accessibility changes can be controversial, I first outlined what I saw as problems at Talk:Ursula Andress#Accessibility and dates. The section WP:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Format consistency seems unambiguous to me (Dates in article references should all have the same format), but Gimme has pointed out that the present references have a kind of consistency, in that the publication dates are all dmy and the access dates all iso. Although I can see the logic in that, I still don't think that really fits with the principle of maximising consistency, and in particular the guidance at Format consistency. I think it would help both of us if others were able to help us reach a consensus (or at least settle the issue one way or the other!). The result obviously may have some bearing on whether the Format consistency may need some amendment, so this is probably the best place to ask. Thanks in advance for your insights. --RexxS (talk) 16:50, 19 October 2010 (UTC)
  • There is, in my opinion, no need to worry if, despite other dates on the page being in English, some, most or all "accessed" are in numeric. However I would not object to them being changed either. It is a moot point whether their display is actually useful for WP. Rich Farmbrough, 16:28, 20 October 2010 (UTC).
    

The presence of the format YYYY-MM-DD does not demonstrate that the publication in which it appears has adopted ISO 8601. In the absence of an explicit definition of what the format means in a particular publication, such dates are ambiguous.

Also, if one were to apply ISO 8601 to the publication date and one wanted to give the publication date of a current monthly magazine, one would be obliged to write 2010-10, which most uninitiated readers would not understand. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:48, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

• As Rich says, there is no issue. It is generally accepted that the access date may be in YYYY-MM-DD format even when the publication date is spelled out. It is a legacy from when citation templates required such input, but it remains accepted practice. Some would like to see all dates spelled out in full at all times, but a recent (enough) RfC rejected such a proposal with specific regard to footnotes. In addition, we do not need another pointless discussion about some people's views on the ISO8601 and the YYYY-MM-DD date format. _wjemather^bigissue 19:01, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
• If not for the unfortunate widespread use of shorthand for year-only date ranges, Jc3s5h, that last format would not pose a problem. ―cobaltcigs 03:28, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

SI unit 'micrometre/er'

The term 'micron' had an official status between 1879 and 1967. It was officially removed from SI 40 years or so ago. The terms 'centigrade' and 'micron' continue to be used by many people but I think it would be worth having mosnum guidance on the use of the both terms 'centigrade' and 'micron' within WP.

Here are some issues that occur to me:

Ability to guess the meaning
The benefits of SI are that they do away with special names that have to be learned or explained. It has a simple format (prefix plus unitname). From that simple format, you can guess the size and/or the unit. Somebody may not have heard the term microwatt before but they should be able to realise it's 'micro' plus 'watt'.

Accessibility - micrometre/er is universal, the term micron isn't
Scientists are aware of both terms and there is no domain or geographical region which doesn't use the SI term. The term 'micron' is used by some (the term 'some' meaning anything less than 100%) scientists in some technical domains and some geographical regions. However, some ordinary people don't know what a micron is (as is shown by the multiple cases where it has to be explained in text). Thus the SI term is more accessible.

Ambiguity The American spelling of micrometer is ambiguous as a single word. Metrology has several ambiguous words (e.g. 'foot', 'yard', 'minute', 'second', 'mole'). However, the meaning of micrometer is always clear from the text (e.g. "the wavelength is 54 micrometers", "we measured it with a micrometer"). That may apply with most of the ambiguous unit terms used in WP articles.

Similar terms as the scale changes e.g. nanometer, micrometer, millimeter It is convenient to be able to scale units using similar terms. This can be seen in text such as US NIST: "from deep violet at 400 nanometers (nm) to near infrared at 4 micrometers (μm)"

Guidance Style guides provide the benefit of consistency across the project. WP isn't tied to one particular domain or geographical region. As with guidance on several issues, we can come up with our own consistent guidance so editors don't have to debate the issue on each article. I propose the following guidance:

• Use the term 'micrometer' or 'micrometre' rather than the term 'micron', except where required by quotes or text describing history of units.
• Use the term 'degrees Celsius' rather than the term 'degrees centigrade', except where required by quotes or text describing history of units.

Comments welcome. Regards Lightmouse (talk) 17:13, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't see the necessity of specifying this in the MOS/MOSNUM. But I'm not against a general "don't use obsolete unit names" covering micron/centigrade/fermi/etc... Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:18, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

This is a result of a dispute that began on User talk:Lightmouse where I objected to his changing the familiar word "micron" to the infrequently used term "micrometer." I am also much in favor of gravitating towards SI units whenever there isn't a particular reason (I can think of a few) for retaining a traditional unit in a particular discussion. However "micron" already is an SI unit inasmuch as it is precisely synonymous with micrometer. It is widely understood and employed and (I am quite sure) is much more frequently used than "micrometer" in every field which deals with such units of distance.

As a quick check, I did a search of 3992 emails I have received regarding an area of optics, especially infrared optics (where wavelength is very often mentioned) and only found 4 instances of "micrometer" being used whereas well over half of the emails did use the word "micron" for that purpose. Thus "micron" was favored by a ratio of 500:1. Having been in this field for >30 years, I haven't seen any trend towards the use of "micrometer" or any reason that the previous term would be abandoned.

It is true, as Lightmouse points out, that using standard SI units and prefixes allows one to immediately understand a new prefix-unit combination when it first appears. That is good. However to blindly impose that principle in the particular case of a very common term which is so widely understood and used is silly. At best you'd be saving a relatively few people the trouble of looking up this term (you can do that on Wikipedia in about 5 seconds!) whereas it is actually in their interest to learn the meaning of micron if they are going to ever be reading further literature in the area of the Wikipedia article in which it appeared!

Yes, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) did indeed remove "micron" as an official term but more importantly changed the symbol of the micron from μ to the more logical μm which everyone now uses. However in most conversation and writing (99.8% according to my quick poll) "micron" is the term used which is synonymous with micrometer.

Although I don't feel as strongly about it, "centigrade" is also a term for an SI unit whose official name became "Celsius" and needn't be changed for the same reason: it is (essentially) universally understood. Though I will concede that in the last 40 years "Celsius" has come into wide (probably wider) use than its synonym. However for "micron" that absolutely is not the case. It is disingenuous for Lightmouse to state that micron is still used by "some" scientists, carefully adding the disclaimer that "some" means any portion less than 100%. It is the normal term and replacing it with "micrometer" stands out when most people read it. If he (or others) have been going through Wikipedia pages to change the normal terminology to "micrometer," (as he did to one page I had edited) then I believe those unwelcome changes should be reverted. (Is there someone who would know how to program a bot to do that?) Interferometrist (talk) 18:26, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

• Generally, I like following the BIPM’s rule of the SI. Note however, that Wikipedia goes with the flow and flouts the BIPM’s requirement that a space separate the value and the unit symbol “%”; we write Greg L has a 75% chance of saying the wrong thing on WT:MOSNUM and not Greg L has a 75 % chance as the BIPM would like. In short, Wikipedia does best when it follows the way the world works and doesn’t try to lead by example. I note that “micron” is still commonly used in modern science, notably infrared work in astronomy, as exemplified by this NASA web page. I would recommend a dose of “Follow Current Literature” here. If a clear majority of the RSs in a particular field or subject use “micron” (and I don’t know this to be the case as it applies to infrared astronomy), then Wikipedia should follow that practice. Greg L (talk) 18:37, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

I did a search for micron and micrometer in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library.

• 1970–2010 : micron = 100,000; micrometer = 29,000 articles
• 2000–2010 : micron = 55,000; micrometer = 18,500 articles
• 2010 : micron = 2662; micrometer = 1692 articles

This is a typical one from September 2010.

Yamada, T. (September 2010). "Accurate determination of volume and evaporation rate of micron-size liquid particle". Journal of Applied Physics. 108 (6): pp. 063523–063523-4. doi:10.1063/1.3483250. ISSN 0021-8979. {{cite journal}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

-- SWTPC6800 (talk) 19:57, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

• It's certainly not wrong to use either, as I was taught the term 'micron' in school. I don't like 'micrometre'. But I note that WP article nomenclature already embraces the "new" term which Lightmouse is soliciting opinions for: 'micron' already redirects to Micrometre. In passing, I would comment that 'micron' is used as a unit of measurement in Battlestar Galactica, different to our current one. Make of that what you will. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:03, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

As a general note, micron is disproportionately used in optics and semiconductor devices compared to all other fields of science (much like Ångström is disproportionally used in spectrometry compared to the rest of the science). It's basically a leftover from before the 1960s and the advent of the SI. Prose-wise, writing "a 20 μm switch" is much better than writing "a 20 micron switch" anyway. Now I'm not saying that a bot should make a (micron --> micrometre) switch whenever it encounters it, but micron is obsolete for micrometer. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:58, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

• The search above for micron vs micrometer is particularly unfair. The most common term in technical literature is μm. Doing a similar search reveals that μm occurs about 3 times as often as micron. −Woodstone (talk) 05:26, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

@Headbomb: I'm much more used to "a 20 μm switch" than the spelt-out form when reading scientific text. It's as though anyone who doesn't understand the symbol wouldn't understand the full form anyway. And anyone who does understand the symbol would surely prefer it as a symbol. Tony (talk) 08:30, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

On the Corpus of Contemporary American English, even restricting the search to texts from the 2005–2010 period, there are 50 occurrences of micron, 43 of microns, 46 of micrometres, and 32 of micrometre (and a few of the latter refer to the tool). That doesn't sound like obsolete to me. (OTOH, IMO the use of μ alone for the unit is dead: I've only ever seen μm except in publications several decades old.) Conversely, in the corpus and the same period, there are 147 occurrences of Celsius compared to 23 of centigrade, so I wouldn't object to discouraging the latter – providing it's actually used often on Wikipedia, per WP:BEANS. A. di M. (talk) 13:58, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Why did you not include the count of "micrometer", "micrometers" and "μm"? That might change te picture. −Woodstone (talk) 16:42, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

My experience among American semiconductor engineers is that in casual conversation the name of the unit is spoken "micron" but written "μm".

I disagree with the argument above that "micron" is more familiar than "micrometer" or "micrometre"; everyone who understands the basic principle of the metric system, where prefixes are attached to base units, and who has previously encountered "micro-" and "meter", should understand "micrometer". I believe the number of people who would understand "micron" is far fewer.

Greg L's comment about following the literature has merit, but if the literature predominantly uses symbols (μm) as I would expect, how do we reconcile that with the custom in Wikipedia and other non-technical publications to spell out unit names in running text? Should we decide that if "μm" predominates in the literature, it should be adopted by Wikipedia but the symbol expanded to "micrometre" or "micrometer"? Jc3s5h (talk) 17:53, 21 October 2010 (UTC)