Remember when entering the dates in an article serial citation used to be oh-so-simple? It really was a piece of piss. You just added a 'began' date and an 'ended' date, formatted as yyyy-mm-dd with nice, handy, standard keyboard hyphens as separators, and you were pretty much away with the smoothing iron. It looked a bit like this:
cite serial | title = The Edge of Destruction | series = Doctor Who | credits = David Whitaker (writer), Richard Martin, Frank Cox (directors), Verity Lambert, Mervyn Pinfield (producers) | network = BBC | began = 1964-02-08 | ended = 1964-02-15
Well, apparently that was all bollocks, because one day the people-who-know-best decided to change the Citation Style 1 format. The simple 'began' and 'ended' tags were packed off to some virtual Gulag, and replaced by the seemingly innocuous but tricky to implement 'date'. The result was that, overnight, any serial citation formatted as above in any Wikipedia article suddenly grew an error message like this:
Check date values in: |date= ( help)
Since then many editors have been running around, spending their valuable time trying to 'correct' serial citations by putting them in the spiffy, revised format. To do that, you need to use the protocol set out below. You might think I'm making this up. I'm bloody not; try it for yourself and you will soon see what I mean.
(See Hoop-jumping at Cambridge Dictionary.org)
Just so you know.
Example of a serial citation with the date range falling within a single month
{{cite serial | title = [[Remembrance of the Daleks]] | series = [[Doctor Who]] | credits = [[Ben Aaronovitch]] (writer), Andrew Morgan, [[John Nathan-Turner]] (uncredited) (directors), John Nathan-Turner (producer) | network = [[BBC]] | station = [[BBC1]] | date = 5–26 October 1988}}
Example of a serial citation with the date range spanning more than one month within a single calendar year
{{cite serial | title = [[The Dalek Invasion of Earth]] | series = [[Doctor Who]] | credits = [[Terry Nation]] (writer), Richard Martin (director), [[Verity Lambert]], [[Mervyn Pinfield]] (producers) | network = [[BBC]] | station = [[BBC1]] | date = 21 November – 26 December 1964}}
Example of a serial citation with the date range spanning more than one calendar year
{{cite serial | title = [[The Daleks]] | series = [[Doctor Who]] | credits = [[Terry Nation]] (writer), [[Christopher Barry]], Richard Martin (directors), [[Verity Lambert]], [[Mervyn Pinfield]] (producers) | network = [[BBC]] | date = 21 December 1963 – 1 February 1964}}
Bowdenford (
talk) 21:53, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
Remember when entering the dates in an article serial citation used to be oh-so-simple? It really was a piece of piss. You just added a 'began' date and an 'ended' date, formatted as yyyy-mm-dd with nice, handy, standard keyboard hyphens as separators, and you were pretty much away with the smoothing iron. It looked a bit like this:
cite serial | title = The Edge of Destruction | series = Doctor Who | credits = David Whitaker (writer), Richard Martin, Frank Cox (directors), Verity Lambert, Mervyn Pinfield (producers) | network = BBC | began = 1964-02-08 | ended = 1964-02-15
Well, apparently that was all bollocks, because one day the people-who-know-best decided to change the Citation Style 1 format. The simple 'began' and 'ended' tags were packed off to some virtual Gulag, and replaced by the seemingly innocuous but tricky to implement 'date'. The result was that, overnight, any serial citation formatted as above in any Wikipedia article suddenly grew an error message like this:
Check date values in: |date= ( help)
Since then many editors have been running around, spending their valuable time trying to 'correct' serial citations by putting them in the spiffy, revised format. To do that, you need to use the protocol set out below. You might think I'm making this up. I'm bloody not; try it for yourself and you will soon see what I mean.
(See Hoop-jumping at Cambridge Dictionary.org)
Just so you know.
Example of a serial citation with the date range falling within a single month
{{cite serial | title = [[Remembrance of the Daleks]] | series = [[Doctor Who]] | credits = [[Ben Aaronovitch]] (writer), Andrew Morgan, [[John Nathan-Turner]] (uncredited) (directors), John Nathan-Turner (producer) | network = [[BBC]] | station = [[BBC1]] | date = 5–26 October 1988}}
Example of a serial citation with the date range spanning more than one month within a single calendar year
{{cite serial | title = [[The Dalek Invasion of Earth]] | series = [[Doctor Who]] | credits = [[Terry Nation]] (writer), Richard Martin (director), [[Verity Lambert]], [[Mervyn Pinfield]] (producers) | network = [[BBC]] | station = [[BBC1]] | date = 21 November – 26 December 1964}}
Example of a serial citation with the date range spanning more than one calendar year
{{cite serial | title = [[The Daleks]] | series = [[Doctor Who]] | credits = [[Terry Nation]] (writer), [[Christopher Barry]], Richard Martin (directors), [[Verity Lambert]], [[Mervyn Pinfield]] (producers) | network = [[BBC]] | date = 21 December 1963 – 1 February 1964}}
Bowdenford (
talk) 21:53, 14 September 2015 (UTC)