This
guideline documents an English Wikipedia
naming convention. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though
occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect
consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the
talk page. |
Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) gives the general principles of how Wikipedia deals with the representation of numbers and dates.
This present naming conventions guideline concentrates on the aspect of how numbers and dates are represented in article titles, that is the names of the articles where the content is (as opposed to redirect pages that also allow non-standardized article titles).
The approach of this guideline is listing recommendations by article content type.
Pages with numeric titles 151 and above usually represent an article about a calendar year in the Common Era, up till several decades in the future (see User:Crouch, Swale/Year DAB for exceptions). Such articles give an overview, in the form of a list, of the major events that took place (or are planned to take place) in that year. In general the use of number-only page names should only be used for "Year in Review" entries.
By community consensus, an article title that is a number in Arabic numerals 1 through 100 is about the number (or hosts a DAB), not the year. (This has since been extended to numbers up to 150, and a few other specific examples like 911.) For these years AD, the format is "AD <year number>", for example AD 100. For years BCE, the format is "<year number> BC", for example 44 BC.
Some numbers that don't indicate a year have a specific meaning, so an additional qualifier or disambiguation technique is needed:
Note that numbers in Roman numerals are usually pages that redirect to:
Unless, of course, the letters, not read as Roman numerals, compose a word with another meaning, e.g. MIX.
There is a unicode range of characters that is specifically used for Roman numerals, for example " Ⅰ" (0x2160) and " ⅰ" (0x2170) – such (individual) characters are redirect pages to the the above-linked section about Roman numerals in Unicode. For other uses it is discouraged to use these characters in Wikipedia article page names. Note also that no automatic case conversion to upper case takes place when these characters are used as the first character of a Wikipedia page name (in other words: " Ⅰ" and " ⅰ" are two different redirect pages).
See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers).
February 27 in recent years |
2024 (Tuesday) |
2023 (Monday) |
2022 (Sunday) |
2021 (Saturday) |
2020 (Thursday) |
2019 (Wednesday) |
2018 (Tuesday) |
2017 (Monday) |
2016 (Saturday) |
2015 (Friday) |
Article titles consisting exclusively of both arabic numerals and separators (like hyphens) are discouraged for content pages. They should be either redirects or disambiguation pages, for example:
There are many events that repeat on a regular or semi-regular basis, such as the Summer Olympics or the U.S. presidential elections. For important events, we will want a separate article for every time the event was held. For such events, one question that arises is: "What's the best way to disambiguate this series of articles?".
Example: 2000 Summer Olympics
While the date is up front, this gives a maybe undue focus to the year, rather than to the event; this format is however widely used, so acceptable as Wikipedia page name format.
In general, use of punctuation marks in article names is discouraged. A request for comment closed in November 2018 deprecated this format in articles about elections. The preferred format for elections is "<date> <Demonym> <type> election". As such United States presidential election, 2000 redirects to 2000 United States presidential election. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (government and legislation).
Also numerical disambiguation for recurring events exists, if this is a usual and generally recognisable way to indicate the event. E.g. Super Bowl → from Super Bowl I (1967) to Super Bowl XLV (2011), etc.
For events that recur at non-regular intervals, for instance Ecumenical councils, the articles on the individual events usually avoid a date indication, but are numbered/characterised otherwise (e.g. place of event, combined with numerical), for instance: Fourth Council of the Lateran; First Council of Lyon; Second Council of Lyon; Council of Vienne – similarly for Crusades: First Crusade, Second Crusade, etc... Note, however, that exceptions to the rule of avoiding dates are applied according to established practice, for instance: Crusade of 1101 (minor crusade, not numbered, and generally indicated by the year it occurred).
Note that for numbering usually a text version of the numbers is used for these types of events, or (exceptionally) Roman numerals, if that is the most established practice (e.g. World War I, World War II).
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); 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 usually avoided (e.g., Jan. '68 → January 1968) unless when there's a clear established practice in reliable sources to do otherwise (e.g.
May 68, different from
May 1968); for centuries numerals are given in text, capitalised (e.g., Crisis of the 3rd century → Crisis of the Third Century)
For disasters (see Wikipedia:WikiProject Disaster management#Naming convention), the recommended format is "<year> <place> <event>". Examples: 2006 New York City plane crash, 1700 Cascadia earthquake. This is only a "soft" recommendation, if no other more appropriate name is available. Counter-examples include Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, Pan Am Flight 103, Minoan eruption, and Kyrill (storm).
As for events that don't recur on (semi-)regular intervals, article titles containing a reference to a time period (not a date) are not bound by strict rules, apart from using the most common name. However, generally, in these cases numbers are written in text, and abbreviations are avoided. Some examples:
For ordinals applied in titles of articles on persons see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)#Ordinals and several culture-specific naming conventions like Wikipedia:Naming conventions (royalty and nobility), Wikipedia:Naming conventions (clergy), etc..., and examples in, for instance, Category:Pharaohs and subcategories.
Apart from such ordinals, it is recommended to avoid any type of numbers in the title of an article that is about a single person, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)#Qualifier between brackets or parentheses:
[...] Try to avoid abbreviations or anything capitalised or containing numbers (apart from where more specific guidelines specify particular exceptions to that) [...]
A notable exception to this is contained in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ancient Romans):
Article titles for the biographies of ancient Romans often need to be disambiguated. The Romans used a limited number of names, and family names were carried on for generations (see Category:Prosopography of ancient Rome, and prosopographical lists such as Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi for a specific example). Article titles may be disambiguated through an epithet or agnomen commonly used in English or by a parenthetical word or phrase: Antoninus Pius, Constantine the Great (an anomaly among article titles for emperors), Gaius Papirius (Pontifex Maximus). Other forms of disambiguation include:
- Highest office. Men who had a public career should usually be distinguished by the highest office held: Lucius Cornelius Scipio (praetor).
- If more than one man by this name held the same office, add a date for disambiguation: Quintus Fulvius Flaccus (consul 237 BC). If a man held the office more than once, use only the year of his first term.
- Notability. A Roman who held no office may be distinguished by most notable activity, occupation, or role: Gaius (jurist), Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi (usurper).
- This form of disambiguation may be used instead of highest office if the figure achieved greater notability in another area: Marcus Antonius (orator).
- " General" is usually too vague to disambiguate Roman men, as the English word represents a broad category of military commands and titles among the Romans, and such commands were common among the ruling elite.
- Personal relationship. If a person's primary notability is a familial or other personal relationship to a better-known person, it may be acceptable to disambiguate accordingly: Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (husband of Claudia Antonia).
Examples illustrate the various ways dates and numbers can show up in article names.
This
guideline documents an English Wikipedia
naming convention. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though
occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect
consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the
talk page. |
Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) gives the general principles of how Wikipedia deals with the representation of numbers and dates.
This present naming conventions guideline concentrates on the aspect of how numbers and dates are represented in article titles, that is the names of the articles where the content is (as opposed to redirect pages that also allow non-standardized article titles).
The approach of this guideline is listing recommendations by article content type.
Pages with numeric titles 151 and above usually represent an article about a calendar year in the Common Era, up till several decades in the future (see User:Crouch, Swale/Year DAB for exceptions). Such articles give an overview, in the form of a list, of the major events that took place (or are planned to take place) in that year. In general the use of number-only page names should only be used for "Year in Review" entries.
By community consensus, an article title that is a number in Arabic numerals 1 through 100 is about the number (or hosts a DAB), not the year. (This has since been extended to numbers up to 150, and a few other specific examples like 911.) For these years AD, the format is "AD <year number>", for example AD 100. For years BCE, the format is "<year number> BC", for example 44 BC.
Some numbers that don't indicate a year have a specific meaning, so an additional qualifier or disambiguation technique is needed:
Note that numbers in Roman numerals are usually pages that redirect to:
Unless, of course, the letters, not read as Roman numerals, compose a word with another meaning, e.g. MIX.
There is a unicode range of characters that is specifically used for Roman numerals, for example " Ⅰ" (0x2160) and " ⅰ" (0x2170) – such (individual) characters are redirect pages to the the above-linked section about Roman numerals in Unicode. For other uses it is discouraged to use these characters in Wikipedia article page names. Note also that no automatic case conversion to upper case takes place when these characters are used as the first character of a Wikipedia page name (in other words: " Ⅰ" and " ⅰ" are two different redirect pages).
See also: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers).
February 27 in recent years |
2024 (Tuesday) |
2023 (Monday) |
2022 (Sunday) |
2021 (Saturday) |
2020 (Thursday) |
2019 (Wednesday) |
2018 (Tuesday) |
2017 (Monday) |
2016 (Saturday) |
2015 (Friday) |
Article titles consisting exclusively of both arabic numerals and separators (like hyphens) are discouraged for content pages. They should be either redirects or disambiguation pages, for example:
There are many events that repeat on a regular or semi-regular basis, such as the Summer Olympics or the U.S. presidential elections. For important events, we will want a separate article for every time the event was held. For such events, one question that arises is: "What's the best way to disambiguate this series of articles?".
Example: 2000 Summer Olympics
While the date is up front, this gives a maybe undue focus to the year, rather than to the event; this format is however widely used, so acceptable as Wikipedia page name format.
In general, use of punctuation marks in article names is discouraged. A request for comment closed in November 2018 deprecated this format in articles about elections. The preferred format for elections is "<date> <Demonym> <type> election". As such United States presidential election, 2000 redirects to 2000 United States presidential election. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (government and legislation).
Also numerical disambiguation for recurring events exists, if this is a usual and generally recognisable way to indicate the event. E.g. Super Bowl → from Super Bowl I (1967) to Super Bowl XLV (2011), etc.
For events that recur at non-regular intervals, for instance Ecumenical councils, the articles on the individual events usually avoid a date indication, but are numbered/characterised otherwise (e.g. place of event, combined with numerical), for instance: Fourth Council of the Lateran; First Council of Lyon; Second Council of Lyon; Council of Vienne – similarly for Crusades: First Crusade, Second Crusade, etc... Note, however, that exceptions to the rule of avoiding dates are applied according to established practice, for instance: Crusade of 1101 (minor crusade, not numbered, and generally indicated by the year it occurred).
Note that for numbering usually a text version of the numbers is used for these types of events, or (exceptionally) Roman numerals, if that is the most established practice (e.g. World War I, World War II).
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); 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 usually avoided (e.g., Jan. '68 → January 1968) unless when there's a clear established practice in reliable sources to do otherwise (e.g.
May 68, different from
May 1968); for centuries numerals are given in text, capitalised (e.g., Crisis of the 3rd century → Crisis of the Third Century)
For disasters (see Wikipedia:WikiProject Disaster management#Naming convention), the recommended format is "<year> <place> <event>". Examples: 2006 New York City plane crash, 1700 Cascadia earthquake. This is only a "soft" recommendation, if no other more appropriate name is available. Counter-examples include Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, Pan Am Flight 103, Minoan eruption, and Kyrill (storm).
As for events that don't recur on (semi-)regular intervals, article titles containing a reference to a time period (not a date) are not bound by strict rules, apart from using the most common name. However, generally, in these cases numbers are written in text, and abbreviations are avoided. Some examples:
For ordinals applied in titles of articles on persons see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)#Ordinals and several culture-specific naming conventions like Wikipedia:Naming conventions (royalty and nobility), Wikipedia:Naming conventions (clergy), etc..., and examples in, for instance, Category:Pharaohs and subcategories.
Apart from such ordinals, it is recommended to avoid any type of numbers in the title of an article that is about a single person, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)#Qualifier between brackets or parentheses:
[...] Try to avoid abbreviations or anything capitalised or containing numbers (apart from where more specific guidelines specify particular exceptions to that) [...]
A notable exception to this is contained in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ancient Romans):
Article titles for the biographies of ancient Romans often need to be disambiguated. The Romans used a limited number of names, and family names were carried on for generations (see Category:Prosopography of ancient Rome, and prosopographical lists such as Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi for a specific example). Article titles may be disambiguated through an epithet or agnomen commonly used in English or by a parenthetical word or phrase: Antoninus Pius, Constantine the Great (an anomaly among article titles for emperors), Gaius Papirius (Pontifex Maximus). Other forms of disambiguation include:
- Highest office. Men who had a public career should usually be distinguished by the highest office held: Lucius Cornelius Scipio (praetor).
- If more than one man by this name held the same office, add a date for disambiguation: Quintus Fulvius Flaccus (consul 237 BC). If a man held the office more than once, use only the year of his first term.
- Notability. A Roman who held no office may be distinguished by most notable activity, occupation, or role: Gaius (jurist), Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi (usurper).
- This form of disambiguation may be used instead of highest office if the figure achieved greater notability in another area: Marcus Antonius (orator).
- " General" is usually too vague to disambiguate Roman men, as the English word represents a broad category of military commands and titles among the Romans, and such commands were common among the ruling elite.
- Personal relationship. If a person's primary notability is a familial or other personal relationship to a better-known person, it may be acceptable to disambiguate accordingly: Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (husband of Claudia Antonia).
Examples illustrate the various ways dates and numbers can show up in article names.