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Time interval

I can't find out a policy concerning time intervals.. think about a sport competition.
What about 22 seconds and 7 tenths? 22.7 / 22.70
What about 4 min and 22.7 seconds? 4 m 22.7 / 4 min 22.7 / 4'22"70
What if you take into account hours?
Don't bite newcomers, Marra 23:53, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

22.7 and 22.70 are not the same thing so it is not a style matter to be decided. " and ' are discouraged as too opaque. 4 min 22.7 sec is acceptable. Rmhermen 00:54, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

These are not the same thing. 22.70 specifies that the measurement was precise to the hundredths. —Centrx→talk • 02:56, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

That's a very good question, Marra.

My take is that an interval of a time is a quantity, and is therefore governed by the "Units of measurement section" rather than the "Times" section, which aims to do with times of the day. Therefore, in prose, it should be expressed as "22.7 seconds" or "22.70 seconds" (depending on the accuracy of the measurement as Centrx said). Likewise, for minutes, "4 minutes 22.7 seconds" or "4 minutes and 22.7 seconds". If in a table or infobox, the symbols are min and s respectively (SI), though "sec" might be more appropriate — personally I much prefer "s".

It would help if you gave us a pointer to the article itself so that we can understand the context. Good job with pointing out the lack of clarity there. Neonumbers 03:14, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I first found 3 m 46.29 s in Ian Thorpe's article, that was not consistent within the article. Looking at other swimming/athletic articles I found that there is not an uniform style, and neither a clear MOS entry.

Quite a lot diffused is to say 3:46.29, in my opinion is more compact and clear than 3 min 46.29 s .. add a couple of hours and it makes 2:03:46.29. I think this is the best format despite heavy when going from hours to hundredth (hh:mm:ss.xx - with xx I mean 1/100th). Marra 09:24, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

How would I know that 3:46 was three minutes and forty-sex seconds but not 3 hours and 46 minutes? I don't like that format at all. Remember "Wiki is not paper" and spell out as much as possible. Rmhermen 21:57, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

You'd certainly be right to say that the format should be consistent!

While it would be possible to argue that the true meaning of 3:46 (and, for that matter, 3:46.29) can be determined based on context, I would still prefer to avoid the risk. In my opinion, 3 min 46.29 s is more readable than 3:46.29—which is of course simply opinion.

It is best to spell out units as 3 minutes 46.29 seconds, but looking at that article, it looks as if it would become rather cumbersome. (Personally, I think the article focuses too much on the little things like times and details, but that's another issue and not one for us.) It might be fair to abbreviate units here, but I would still prefer against 3:46.29, except in extended tables (of more than, say, ten rows). My two cents. Neonumbers 07:49, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Well.. I did a quick survey on FINA and IAAF websites, it turns out that the format hh:mm:ss.xx (with xx I mean 1/100th) is the one actually used.

• In long events hundredth are avoided (here) and sometimes even tenth (here)
• In sprints hours are not taken into account (here) and even minutes may be omitted (here) and (here)

This format is never ambiguous (3:46 can't exists since for a such short race hundredth are considerd, so 3:46.29) and rarely heavy to read (since you never go from hours to hundredth).

Choosing the format for wikipedia you should consider that this kind of articles are often filled with a lot of timing info so compactness is an issue. By the way I wouldn't say that these infos are details! Believe me that these are really interesting things for a fan. Marra 16:36, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

lol, okay, for a fan (as only an encyclopedia can do), if you say so... :-P and we should consider, Marra ;-)

For an article like that I could understand 1:23.45. The only concern I would have is immediate clarity for people that aren't sports fans. In context, it's not ambiguous, but as is always the case, it needs to be clear. Such clarity could be achieved by, say, clear wording of a sentence, or may not need any effort at all to be achieved.

I would imagine that this format would only work well for race times (and lots of them). Intervals of time in other contexts would be better off with 1 min 23 s — unless there's other contexts? Neonumbers 07:37, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I completely agree with you, in sport-related articles hh:mm:ss.sss is the right format.. moreover ISO 8601 and W3C say the same thing! :)

I read some ISO directives and stuff like 3 min 46.29 s are never mentioned. Will we still allow this on wikipedia? I'd say yes for purpose of clarity.. but the answer is no more obvious in my opinion. Marra 09:25, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm just trying to think of an instance in which it would actually need to be used. If there is one, then yes. The abbreviations are those recommended by the SI manual, and it follows all of the guidelines in the units section of our manual here, and of course it's clear. I think we would need it for intervals of time that are both abbreviated and not a race time, but I can't name any. Even for non-race sports like football and basketball, I don't see how such information would be encyclopedic content anyway (except in exceptional circumstances).

As always, most instances would be fully spelt out, but in the event that abbreviation of this is required, I'd say yes too. Neonumbers 11:09, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

For instances look here and here. There are a lot of space related articles, but this seems to be the only other field. I think this format fits well here, because space articles use it few times. Marra 18:47, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay. That clears that up, then. I don't think it's necessary to include this explicitly in the manual, but at least we've cleared it all up. Neonumbers 08:55, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Question RE: Linking Source Access Dates in a Citation

For a FA-candidate, one reviewer continues to object on the grounds that the dates on which a cited source was accessed as mentioned in the footnote/citation should be linked up. I refuse do to this, as the nominator and chief contributor to the FA-candidate because it's just ludicrous given that this is just a "guideline" and that it would violate Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context in that linking up such dates will not be relevant to the article's context or aid or facilitate in any way a reader's understanding of the article. So I ask the following:

• What is the consensus regarding this guideline being in force on access dates in citations?
• If there hasn't been a consensus, what is the opinion of the contributers and other people who debate this MOS provision?

I thank you in advance for your answers and assistance. —ExplorerCDT 18:04, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

The reason we use linked dates is not because they link to anything, but because they are automatically converted to the user's preferred format. For a FA, all dates should be wikidates. --Pete 18:37, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

• Please see and respond to the question below posed to Dwaipayanc. —ExplorerCDT 18:43, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

My observation Quoting Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers), "If a date includes both a month and a day, then the date should almost always be linked to allow readers' date preferences to work, displaying the reader's chosen format."

Also, "This Manual of Style, like all style guides, attempts to encourage consistency and ease of reading. The guidelines here are just that: guidelines are not inflexible rules; one way is often as good as another, but if everyone does it the same way, Wikipedia will be easier to read, write and edit." Please comment. Regards.--Dwaipayan (talk) 18:39, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

• Please explain how linking source access dates are relevant to the context of the article or how they increase the understanding of an article? Please don't just quote the MoS, because it's already accepted as a given...ambiguous and contradictory as it is. —ExplorerCDT 18:43, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, access dates are not relevant to the context of the article. That is clear. This policy concerns allowing readers' date preferences (to display the reader's chosen format).--Dwaipayan (talk) 19:57, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Linked dates make the article easier to read because the date appears in a format which is natural to the reader, not one which is unnatural. I think almost everyone agrees that linking and formatting should be able to be done separately, but the software doesn't work that way at the moment. Given that they're the same operation, the clear consensus is that the advantage of making dates appear in the reader's preferred format is greater than the disadvantage of making links that are not relevant to the context. Stephen Turner (Talk) 20:03, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

This again? Please see A new parallel syntax for autoformatting dates above, especially the subsection "Update on progress". A lot of people share your concern about overpurposing the linking of dates, but progress on a fix is slow. -- nae'blis 17:37, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Space between currency symbol and number?

So for most units (which go after the number) we have a clear guideline to use an nbsp space between number and unit. For currency symbols in front of the number, there is no such guideline - and the examples in this manual are not consistent:

• US$123
• €123
• GB£ 123 or GBP 123 <=====
• C$123
• AU$123
• NZ$123
• Mex$123
• 123 Chinese renminbi, RMB 123, or CNY 123 <=====

...so GB pound and Renminbi both have spaces - but the others don't? Where there is a space, it's not a nbsp space? I can see why we might want a space between GBP/RMB and the number - it looks weird with the GB£ form - and why is it any different than US$ in this regard? When there is a space - should it be an nbsp? I think so - we don't want it split from the number by a newline. Help! SteveBaker 00:40, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree that any space ought to be a nonbreaking space. Past that, I have no opinion. This may be one of those cases where every country on Earth uses a quaint local format. And we are a long way from an international standard currency. -- BBlackmoor ^(talk) • 2007-01-03

Well, then I think I'll 'be bold' and just fix it. I'm going to put:

"Cases such as GB£ which end in a symbol should not be followed by a space and the cases where there is an alphabetic character should be followed by a single, non-breaking space."

SteveBaker 05:58, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I still think currency should be treated just like any other unit, i.e. suffixed with a space (123 GBP), but I guess even if I got support here, the common English editor would ignore that (logic) convention (because he would not look for it and assume a different one). Christoph Päper 12:04, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Context (Number in words)

*Within a context or a list, style should be consistent. Example: There were 5 cats, 12 dogs, and 32 birds. or There were five cats, twelve dogs, and thirty-two birds.

Is there a clearer definition of "context"? Something like "He is nth place in RBI (three-digit number) and nth place in stolen bases (two-digit number)" would be confusing because it looks like there are two contexts intertwined (and often viewed as one context). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Vic226 (talk • contribs) 18:02, 6 January 2007 (UTC).

(Damn, got caught by HagermanBot :( ) Vic226_(chat) 18:03, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's possible to be definitive about what makes a "context", because it could be very subject-specific. Stephen Turner (Talk) 20:17, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

In that sentence, I would consider the two places in the same context, and each of the numbers in parentheses in their own contexts — but then again, you could apply the "list" one to that sentence, because if you remove everything in parentheses, you'd find that it's sort of a list. Neonumbers 10:07, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

SI (metric) units

Not only does the the Manual of Style recommend SI (metric) units of measure for science-related articles, but also: a Wikipedia goal is to present a world-wide view, see:

Because only Burma, Liberia, and the United States have not adopted the metric system as their official non-voluntary system[1], it seems appropriate to use the Metric System first (with the US Customary Sytem in parentheses) in most Wikipedia articles.

The US did "officially" adopt the metric system in 1975 (see Metrication in the United States). And, in 1988, the United States Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act designated the metric system as "the preferred system". But it calls for a voluntary conversion: the 1988 legislation states that the Federal Government has a responsibility to assist industry in voluntarily conversion.

Please edit the project page—reversion isn't particularly helpful.--Lesikar 20:34, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I've reverted it again. I'm not trying to be unhelpful, and I realise your changes were well-intentioned, but it's conventional not to make changes to the Manual of Style until after they've been discussed and reached consensus, because it affects all the other pages on Wikipedia. (I realise that this is contrary to the usual rule of be bold).

There are many factors to weigh up when deciding which units to use, in particular which units the source you got it from used, and which country the article is about. But in any case it seems rather inflammatory to point out in the style guide that only Burma, Liberia and the United States have not adopted the metric system.

Stephen Turner (Talk) 21:07, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the very helpful discussion. I'll wait for further discussion before making any significant changes.--Lesikar 21:42, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

...and thanks for your understanding. Being reverted is never pleasant, so I'm sorry I felt it necessary.

I notice that the guidance does already say "If for some reason the choice of units is arbitrary, choose SI units as the main unit, with other units in parentheses. For subjects dealing with the United States, it might be more appropriate to use U.S. measurements first." So I'm not even sure your latest addition "Consider applying this policy to non-science articles as well" is necessary. Do you feel the existing guideline doesn't cover it well enough?

Stephen Turner (Talk) 22:00, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

It's just that the quote—near the top of Units-of-Measure section—from Scientific Style, "use SI units as the main units in science articles" implies that using SI units as the main units applies only to science articles, and one has to read the rest of the Units-of-Measure section to get the sense that SI units should generally be used as the main units, followed by US units in parentheses.--Lesikar 23:01, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

No, the style guide takes no position on this, and the relevant guidance is already in the section with the appropriate wording that was given far more consideration than you edit warring. —Centrx→talk • 04:30, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually the U.S. doesn't have an official measurement system just like it doesn't have an offical language. The English system is used because of inertia. It actually adopted the metric system in 1866 when it ratified the Treaty of the Meter.

For consistency and ease that if it is under a category that defines in metric units then all things related to the category should be in metric also and vice versa for English units. For example the Category:Skyscapers by height are listed in meters but include U.S. buildings. Must we make it harder to compare U.S. buildings with other buildings around the world by having a separate subcategory of heights in feet? The infoboxes have primary English/secondary metric. This defeats the purpose of dividing buildings of certain heights in meters.

Another category to exclusively use metric is when talking about antenna heights, broadcasting engineers use metric units like the watt. The height of the transmitting antenna must be roughly half of the wavelength to transmit properly, which is measured in meters. In early broacasting, frequency was measured in meters not kilohertz or megahertz, a variation of hertz in multiples of 1000 or 1,000,000 respectively. This is also why antenna heights should be in meters also. — SirChan 09:27, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Month and Year only

• April, 2006
• April of 2006

Which one should we standardize on? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 10:45, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Pardon? What would be the need to standardise on anything here?

• We don't need to even create an online encyclopedia, yet we do. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 11:24, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

• However, we don't create Wikipedia guidelines for the fun of creating them. If there's no issue to address, this is called rulecruft, per Wikipedia:Avoid instruction creep. "Instruction creep" is the equivalent of "non-notable" in main namespace, and gets deleted. So if you can't demonstrate making a choice between "April, 2006" and "April of 2006" is beneficial for the encyclopedia, there's not going to be a rule about it. Further, if you'd have read the below, you'd have gotten the hint that, as far as page names are concerned, current standardisation seems to go toward April 2006, and neither "April, 2006" nor "April of 2006". No problem for me to add that to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (numbers and dates)#Articles on other standard time periods --Francis Schonken 11:36, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

  • Done, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (numbers and dates)#Months --Francis Schonken 12:05, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Only for page names, arguably, some standardisation *might* (that is if this would be a real problem, as in: matter of dispute) be in order. In which case Wikipedia:Naming conventions (numbers and dates) is the relevant guideline, and not this MoS page. Note that May 1968 is an example on that NC guideline page, in this paragraph (I added some bolding):

If a time indicator is used in the title of an article on an event that doesn't recur at regular intervals (or didn't recur at all) there's no "standard format" for the representation of the time indicator, so there is for instance: Crisis of the Third Century; German Crusade, 1096 (one of the developments of the First Crusade); May 1968, etc... The format of the date depends, in these cases, from established practice in history books and the like. In general, however, abbreviations for years or months are avoided (e.g., May '68 → May 1968); for centuries numerals are given in text, capitalised (e.g., Crisis of the 3rd century → Crisis of the Third Century)

So, neither "May, 1968" nor "May of 1968" as page name for the content (but both can be redirects of course). And in all other articles you use what is most appropriate. Which may be "May of 1968" or "May, 1968" as you choose, for example for something that happened in the US, and has no relation to what is described in the May 1968 article. --Francis Schonken 11:08, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Note also that currently April 2006 is a page name, without April, 2006 nor April of 2006 redirecting to it. Feel free to create these redirects. --Francis Schonken 11:18, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Oops, and then I also just noticed this in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Incorrect date formats:

• Do not put a comma or the word "of" between a month and year:
  • Incorrect: "December, 1945" and "December of 1945"
  • Correct: "December 1945"

...which seems to make this discussion moot (as far as the current content of the MoS is concerned - or was there an intention to change that?) --Francis Schonken 12:22, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

...ummm, yes, April 2006 is the correct format, and has been for quite some time, and neither month nor year should be linked. Neonumbers 23:44, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

a dot m dot

I think it's a little inflexible to disallow 1pm and 7am. Why insist on dots when the language has undergone a clear shift to removing them in initialisms such as NATO, NASA, and BBC? Only U dot S dot survives, in the US alone, since other English-speakers have lost the dots in that one. Tony 11:10, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

• NATO, NASA, and BBC are not equivalent comparisons to A.M. and P.M. and neither do NATO, NASA and BBC use them. They use 24-hour time, sometimes like 0700 or 1300, sometimes split by a colon 07:00, 13:00. Most of Europe doesn't use P.M. or A.M. And writing it as 1pm is lazy, sloppy and not acceptable per style guides, writing manuals, etc.. This isn't a metric measurement abbreviation like kilometer, or gram, (which is usually the abbreviation of one word), it's an abbreviation of a Latin phrase. When abbreviating a multi-word phrase (like post meridian or ante meridian, or anno domini, or before christ, or id est, or examplia gratia, or ad majorem dei gloriam) or something that isn't speficially an acronym like NATO or NASA or BBC, it's typical to use periods (they have a name...and that name isn't "dots"). The U.S./USA (as well as U.K./UK) example is not accurate (spots outside the U.S. still commonly use the punctuated form), nor is it a decent comparison. Because it hovers on that acronym/abbreviation boundary and does so chiefly because of the third letter, as in USA. —ExplorerCDT 19:08, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
  • No, you misunderstood what Tony said. We don't use N.A.T.O., N.A.S.A. or B.B.C. anymore - so why would we say 1p.m. and 7a.m.? We say NATO, NASA and BBC - so we should also say 1am and 7pm. (And we do - I've looked at a bazillion articles and I've yet to find one that uses the a.m. and p.m. style. If this policy says that, it's being widely ignored - and correctly so I would say). SteveBaker 19:28, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
    • No I didn't, I understood completely, and explained to Tony the rationale. You're the one with reading comprehension problems NATO is an acronym. p.m. is an abbreviation, not an acronym. I don't use p.m./a.m. I stick to the 24 hour clock that most of the world uses and which renders p.m. and a.m. obsolete. —ExplorerCDT 19:28, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
      • I agree that 24 hour clock notation is clearer - but that's not what a large fraction of the English speaking world uses - so we are stuck with am and pm (or a.m. and p.m.) and we need a policy to allow us to write times like that. (Incidentally, you said that 'period' is preferred over 'dot' - that's only true amongst US English speakers - British English speakers call that character a 'full stop'. Since 'full stop' is a bit of a mouthful, many people (especially computer users) just say 'dot' instead. Notice that people say: "W W W dot Wikipedia dot org" rather than "W W W period Wikipedia period org" or "W W W full-stop Wikipedia full-stop org". I would go so far as to suggest that 'dot' is used when talking about the ASCII character '.' and 'full-stop' or 'period' refers to the use of that character as a punctuation symbol. SteveBaker 19:34, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
        • FYI, they've only been known as "full stops" since the telegraph was invented. —ExplorerCDT 00:10, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
          • I'm from New Zealand, and here, we always say "dots" unless we're referring to something that goes at the end of a sentence, in which case, "full stops".  :-P Neonumbers 00:23, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

The guideline is deliberately inflexible to encourage consistency. For all it's worth, am, a.m., AM, or A.M. could well have been chosen at random; however, I am still of the position that a.m. would be the best option. From what I have seen, none of those four options is any more common than another, and all are equally accurate and understandable. However, for one encyclopedia, one format should be chosen.

The difference between a.m. and an acronym is that acronyms are all in uppercase, thereby making it clear that it is an acronym, whereas the same does not hold for a.m.. I do not see this as comparable to acronyms: I see them as entirely independent situations. "a.m.", in my opinion, looks neater and more obvious that it is an abbreviation of something. ExplorerCDT provided a good (better) explanation (from his fourth sentence onwards).

The Chicago Manual of Style recommends either "a.m." or "AM" (in small caps). For obvious reasons, the latter wouldn't really work here.

In terms of application, I would encourage everyone to try not to think of the manual in terms of "working" or "ignored", but as guideline of good and consistent style that articles will eventually find their way to. The time guideline is the relatively new one, and times are not often encountered in articles (at least, not in my experience), so I would fully understand that most times don't follow it yet. Editors are not obliged to follow the manual of style, and for something uncommon like this I wouldn't expect most editors to even know about it. Neonumbers 23:39, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

• Also consider that in Latin, it is "ante meridian" (or meridien, meridiem...the "ian" is horribly anglicized Latin) and "post meridian" and should be used in lowercase for chiefly grammatical reasons relating to its case and sentence placement. The subscripted "AM" is probably recommended by Chicago MoS to differentiate it from the typeface of the regular text by which it may be surrounded. —ExplorerCDT 00:08, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

"am" would be the unmarked case, i.e. it looks like a normal word. It has been a long tradition and it is a good choice to use a marked case for abbreviations. Using dots (or whatever you prefer to call them) is one option, uppercasing (or using small caps) is another, combining both is redundant and therefore for a large part is being phased out. Some people prefer to use dots for abbreviations that are (usually) expanded upon reading ("i.e." -> "that is") and all caps otherwise (and then there are those acronyms (e.g. RADAR) that become real words (radar) after a while).

The "U.S." case I could only explain with situations where the unmarked case is all uppercase as often seen in CNN-inspired TV crawls, because there is also another, common English word that would look the same ("us"). Why US-Americans cannot get used to "US" in normal text, I do not understand. It was not possible to convince them over at Talk of the parent of this page the last two times I tried.

We would not have to have this discussion at all if we had stayed with the 24-hours format. Christoph Päper 12:33, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Yet again, if Wikipedia would just standardize on international standard date format (ISO 8601), this would not even be an issue. -- BBlackmoor ^(talk) • 2007-01-11 21:43Z

• Explorer, I wasn't expecting to be called "lazy" and "sloppy", nor to see someone else accused of having a reading problem. They're acronyms only if they can be said as a word in their own right, such as "NATO"; they're initialisms if not, such as "PBS". AM and PM are initialisms whether we like it or not. Yes, e.g., needs the dots, still, I'm advised by professional editors, despite what plain English proponents say. I think that this issue is unresolved, and that the neatest solution is to be inclusive and allow WPs to use upper or lower case, dots or no dots, as they choose—just as for the free policy on the use of spelling dialects. Consistency within an article is, of course, the important issue. Tony 01:12, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I still hold that we should advise one specific format for the entire encyclopedia (i.e. one for 12-hour, and another for 24-hour). Consistency across the encyclopedia is best.

I hope that people will be willing—especially on a minor issue like this—to abandon their personal preferences and agree to stick to one format, whatever the format will be. Yes, I meant the "personal" part — even if you can explain your personal preference logically (and I know we all can), if we take a step back and think about it, all the formats can work.

Some, in our respective opinions, will work better than others. For example, I am of the opinion that "a.m." works best. But this does not mean "am" doesn't work at all. I've seen all four formats (AM, A.M.) and understood them all. But it is far more beneficial for us to stick to one format—any format—in the interests of making Wikipedia one, coherent, professional encyclopedia.

Before anyone brings up instruction creep, this isn't intended to make people use one format, it's intended to get articles consistent. All that matters is that changes to make it that format are respected (and editors that want to know which one can come here and find out—those that don't needn't worry). To say "use any" defeats the purpose of this so-called "guidance". Neonumbers 04:27, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

You have nailed the problem of many of the so-called guidances in this Manual of Style. They are too loose. Christoph Päper 14:02, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't see the benefit of rigid standardation on such a trifling detail. There are plenty of things in Wikipedia that are inconsistent, starting with the article prose and on through the category system, use of BE/AmE, and through just about everything else. That is pretty much what makes the encyclopedia work; rigid standardization improves nothing and harms much, and I for one don't plan to follow the people on this crusade. --Delirium 09:24, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I fail to see how any article can be harmed by having it's a.m./p.m. style changed. Certainly a substaintial number of the articles that I edited some time ago when I brought them all into alignment, used a mixture, which was not good. The only downside is we may be giving (by a combination of all the stlyle editing) an air of a level professionalism which the content falls short of. Rich Farmbrough, 14:33 23 January 2007 (GMT).

Date ranges

What about date ranges? I ran into 14-15 May 1994. Either May 14-15, 1994 nor 14-15 May 1994 won't work for user with different preferance. Is this addressed? Thank you.--Pethr 03:09, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

It's brought up on this talk page from time to time. You certainly need the month in both dates as you've discovered, but if I recall correctly, I think the only format which works for all date preferences is to include not only the month but also the year in both dates, i.e., [[14 May]] [[1994]] – [[15 May]] [[1994]] or equivalent.

Do people think we should make a guideline about this? It seems to be something of a FAQ.

Stephen Turner (Talk) 09:37, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Yep, that seems to be worth it. Would it work without the first mention of the year? It'd be fine by me. Neonumbers 11:40, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I think it doesn't work for the few people who've chosen ISO 8601 dates. They would see 14 May – 1994-05-15. Stephen Turner (Talk) 12:23, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

And people who've chosen the year-first format "1994 May 15" have the same problem: "14 May - 1994 May 15". Stephen Turner (Talk) 12:25, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Would it be possible to create template for such things? f.e. {{dr|94-05-16|94-05-17}}. Would it be possible to program it to include different user settings and different types of ranges? It doesn't look good to have in the text May 16, 1994–May 17 1994, does it? It even spoils the meaning since such a long range looks rather like different years not two days. Thank you.--Pethr 01:34, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I rather foolishly hinted at this problem with the proposed alternative syntax for dates. But the above summary is correct, although I think that adding the month is a good compromise. (How many people havbe ISO set (I know I have had) ? Rich Farmbrough, 14:35 23 January 2007 (GMT).