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What advantages does the ISO format have over spelling out the month? If the month is written out, the date is shown exactly as pronounced, albeit perhaps in a different order. There can be no confusion. Using a number for the month can be harder to read for someone not used to it, and some particularly clueless non-Americans (hah! I get to refer to a subset of non-Americans as being stupid for once!) may mistake the month as the day. What advantages does it offer? All I can see is that it's very handy for computer storage, since alphabetizing will automatically put everything in the correct date order, but that's hardly relevant, is it? — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 03:35, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
I would replace the section
The ISO formats, e.g., 2004-02-17 are less ambiguous but also not as widely comprehended. Redirects for other ISO forms should always be created. The YYYY-MM-DD format currently only follows the style of ISO 8601, but not the proleptic Gregorian calendar.
to read
The ISO formats, e.g., 2004-02-17 are less ambiguous but also not as widely comprehended, and therefore other formats are normally preferred. If for some reason using ISO is necessary, redirects for other ISO forms should always be created. The YYYY-MM-DD format currently only follows the style of ISO 8601, but not the proleptic Gregorian calendar.
And under "Incorrect date formats", change
Do not use numbers to express a month, except in full ISO 8601 format, which always includes the year. Always express a month as a whole word (for example, "February") to avoid ambiguity. In the ISO 8601 format, a leading zero is always added to single-digit months and days.
to
Never use numbers to express a month, unless for some reason the ISO 8601 format (which always includes the year) is necessary. Always express a month as a whole word (for example, "February") to avoid ambiguity.
Again, after consideration, I can't find a single reason that ISO should be used. I know it's annoying for me, at least, to figure out what the correct month is for any month-numbered format, and it's even more annoying when the numbers are in an odd order (such as, say, with the year first). As far as I can tell, month-named formats are completely unambiguous to everyone and nobody has any difficulty reading them. Maybe people are using ISO because they prefer it stylistically, but I think the ease of reading for some is more important than the stylistic preference of anyone. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 04:08, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
The ISO formats, e.g., 2004-02-17 are not ambiguous and are therefore preferred. The YYYY-MM-DD format currently only follows the style of ISO 8601, but not the proleptic Gregorian calendar.
If no year is present, do not use numbers to express a month. In such cases express a month as a whole word (for example, "February") to avoid ambiguity.
I don't see how "14 February 2006" is ambiguous. "12-02" or "12/2" are ambiguous, of course, they are already banned. ISO 8601 is not English, at the very least, it is not accurate prose. While its use in tables, to assist alignment or to save space, might work, I would not expect to see, "On 2006-02-14, some guy was lonely".
Let's forget about those who have set preferences for a moment, and consider new or unregistered users. (Remember that a format doesn't need to actually need to be "allowed" as written for user preferences to use that format, technically speaking.) I'd bet anything most people probably wouldn't care about "February 14, 2006" vs. "14 February 2006", but "2006-02-14" would throw them off-balance a bit. This is an encyclopedia. It uses a formal, accessible tone. It is not the responsibility of the reader to become fluent in a not-often-used date format (I won't say "rarely", the point is, in this type of writing, we generally spell dates out.) Wikipedia is an international English encyclopedia, not an international multi-lingual encyclopedia. Neonumbers 06:06, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
I skimmed this section, and I just wanted to mention that one reason that most English speakers do not recognize the ISO 8601 format is becuase they do NOT see it. If people saw it used, they would grow accustomed to it, but they do not becuase it's not used. I agree that it's uncyclopedic for something to be written "On 2006-01-29...," but just becaue it doesn't look great in formal prose does not mean it should not be used elsewhere. And somewhere way up there was a comment that US usage of dates is not in logical order, being m/d/yy or m/d/yyyy (yes, I do mean m and d rather than mm and dd). However, the same is true (to a greater extent, possibly) of the d/m/yy or d/m/yyyy formats--logically, if one is looking at something, seeing the day first gives one no perspective of the range of times or even the order of occurence of events--instead, seeing the month first at least helps, but seeing the year first makes the most sense, it's in largest to smallest order and can be "alphebetized" or ordered easily and logically while still being chronolical. // MrD9 08:46, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
GusCaicedo, this is the English Wikipedia, and therefore quite naturally we follow the conventions of English, not other languages. In English-speaking nations, 1.000,000 is never used; it's always 1,000.000 or, in some scientific contexts, 1 000.000. There's no ambiguity in English there. Granted, there are many non-native English speakers on Wikipedia, but it's primarily intended for English speakers; otherwise we'd ban the use of less-common words where commoner ones would work, for instance, and maybe use more "logical" spelling or grammar despite the increased burden this would put on English speakers.
Anyway, are most of us agreed that at least ISO shouldn't be used in prose? What about dates of publication in references? — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 03:01, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
I would like to add the fairly standard format abbreviation fl. (floruit or "florished") to the DOBAD section e.g.
This is as unambiguous as I can make it without (re)introducing b. for born and d. for died. Comments? Rich Farmbrough. 18:21, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
There is a Village pump discussion (sparked by the date link dispute) titled: .
"Is it permissible to implement the guidance in the Manual of Style?". Interested parties are invited to contribute.
bobblewik
15:43, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
Before the current guidance on percent, we had a long discussion about:
I have not looked back at the archive but I seem to remember that we decided not to mandate. Can we discuss this again because User:Freakofnurture tells says it must be the first option of the three. If this is the case, the MoS needs to say so. bobblewik
(It might be that science journals do things differently, though. If so, that would give me pause.) — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 04:13, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
Two points:
Is there a policy about "first' vs "1st" etc? does it go by "names of numbers" (spell out small ones? Bubba73 (talk), 04:31, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
Hi all,
Should we capitalize unit names? The problem came up when using amperes. I believe that we should only capitalize when refering to the scientist.
Tony 05:58, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
a table in this section shows Kb for kilobyte; this should be KB, to match the rest of the table, to match common usage of KB and to match the rest of wikipedia. I just do not know how to find the source of the table to make this change. Help! please. Thanks Hmains 20:02, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 35 | Archive 36 | Archive 37 | Archive 38 | Archive 39 | Archive 40 | → | Archive 45 |
What advantages does the ISO format have over spelling out the month? If the month is written out, the date is shown exactly as pronounced, albeit perhaps in a different order. There can be no confusion. Using a number for the month can be harder to read for someone not used to it, and some particularly clueless non-Americans (hah! I get to refer to a subset of non-Americans as being stupid for once!) may mistake the month as the day. What advantages does it offer? All I can see is that it's very handy for computer storage, since alphabetizing will automatically put everything in the correct date order, but that's hardly relevant, is it? — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 03:35, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
I would replace the section
The ISO formats, e.g., 2004-02-17 are less ambiguous but also not as widely comprehended. Redirects for other ISO forms should always be created. The YYYY-MM-DD format currently only follows the style of ISO 8601, but not the proleptic Gregorian calendar.
to read
The ISO formats, e.g., 2004-02-17 are less ambiguous but also not as widely comprehended, and therefore other formats are normally preferred. If for some reason using ISO is necessary, redirects for other ISO forms should always be created. The YYYY-MM-DD format currently only follows the style of ISO 8601, but not the proleptic Gregorian calendar.
And under "Incorrect date formats", change
Do not use numbers to express a month, except in full ISO 8601 format, which always includes the year. Always express a month as a whole word (for example, "February") to avoid ambiguity. In the ISO 8601 format, a leading zero is always added to single-digit months and days.
to
Never use numbers to express a month, unless for some reason the ISO 8601 format (which always includes the year) is necessary. Always express a month as a whole word (for example, "February") to avoid ambiguity.
Again, after consideration, I can't find a single reason that ISO should be used. I know it's annoying for me, at least, to figure out what the correct month is for any month-numbered format, and it's even more annoying when the numbers are in an odd order (such as, say, with the year first). As far as I can tell, month-named formats are completely unambiguous to everyone and nobody has any difficulty reading them. Maybe people are using ISO because they prefer it stylistically, but I think the ease of reading for some is more important than the stylistic preference of anyone. — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 04:08, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
The ISO formats, e.g., 2004-02-17 are not ambiguous and are therefore preferred. The YYYY-MM-DD format currently only follows the style of ISO 8601, but not the proleptic Gregorian calendar.
If no year is present, do not use numbers to express a month. In such cases express a month as a whole word (for example, "February") to avoid ambiguity.
I don't see how "14 February 2006" is ambiguous. "12-02" or "12/2" are ambiguous, of course, they are already banned. ISO 8601 is not English, at the very least, it is not accurate prose. While its use in tables, to assist alignment or to save space, might work, I would not expect to see, "On 2006-02-14, some guy was lonely".
Let's forget about those who have set preferences for a moment, and consider new or unregistered users. (Remember that a format doesn't need to actually need to be "allowed" as written for user preferences to use that format, technically speaking.) I'd bet anything most people probably wouldn't care about "February 14, 2006" vs. "14 February 2006", but "2006-02-14" would throw them off-balance a bit. This is an encyclopedia. It uses a formal, accessible tone. It is not the responsibility of the reader to become fluent in a not-often-used date format (I won't say "rarely", the point is, in this type of writing, we generally spell dates out.) Wikipedia is an international English encyclopedia, not an international multi-lingual encyclopedia. Neonumbers 06:06, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
I skimmed this section, and I just wanted to mention that one reason that most English speakers do not recognize the ISO 8601 format is becuase they do NOT see it. If people saw it used, they would grow accustomed to it, but they do not becuase it's not used. I agree that it's uncyclopedic for something to be written "On 2006-01-29...," but just becaue it doesn't look great in formal prose does not mean it should not be used elsewhere. And somewhere way up there was a comment that US usage of dates is not in logical order, being m/d/yy or m/d/yyyy (yes, I do mean m and d rather than mm and dd). However, the same is true (to a greater extent, possibly) of the d/m/yy or d/m/yyyy formats--logically, if one is looking at something, seeing the day first gives one no perspective of the range of times or even the order of occurence of events--instead, seeing the month first at least helps, but seeing the year first makes the most sense, it's in largest to smallest order and can be "alphebetized" or ordered easily and logically while still being chronolical. // MrD9 08:46, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
GusCaicedo, this is the English Wikipedia, and therefore quite naturally we follow the conventions of English, not other languages. In English-speaking nations, 1.000,000 is never used; it's always 1,000.000 or, in some scientific contexts, 1 000.000. There's no ambiguity in English there. Granted, there are many non-native English speakers on Wikipedia, but it's primarily intended for English speakers; otherwise we'd ban the use of less-common words where commoner ones would work, for instance, and maybe use more "logical" spelling or grammar despite the increased burden this would put on English speakers.
Anyway, are most of us agreed that at least ISO shouldn't be used in prose? What about dates of publication in references? — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 03:01, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
I would like to add the fairly standard format abbreviation fl. (floruit or "florished") to the DOBAD section e.g.
This is as unambiguous as I can make it without (re)introducing b. for born and d. for died. Comments? Rich Farmbrough. 18:21, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
There is a Village pump discussion (sparked by the date link dispute) titled: .
"Is it permissible to implement the guidance in the Manual of Style?". Interested parties are invited to contribute.
bobblewik
15:43, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
Before the current guidance on percent, we had a long discussion about:
I have not looked back at the archive but I seem to remember that we decided not to mandate. Can we discuss this again because User:Freakofnurture tells says it must be the first option of the three. If this is the case, the MoS needs to say so. bobblewik
(It might be that science journals do things differently, though. If so, that would give me pause.) — Simetrical ( talk • contribs) 04:13, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
Two points:
Is there a policy about "first' vs "1st" etc? does it go by "names of numbers" (spell out small ones? Bubba73 (talk), 04:31, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
Hi all,
Should we capitalize unit names? The problem came up when using amperes. I believe that we should only capitalize when refering to the scientist.
Tony 05:58, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
a table in this section shows Kb for kilobyte; this should be KB, to match the rest of the table, to match common usage of KB and to match the rest of wikipedia. I just do not know how to find the source of the table to make this change. Help! please. Thanks Hmains 20:02, 19 February 2006 (UTC)