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 | This guideline is a part of the English Wikipedia's Manual of Style. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. Any substantive edit to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page. |
| Manual of Style (MoS) |
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This page guides the presentation of numbers, dates, times, measurements, currencies, coordinates, and similar items in articles. The aim is to promote clarity, cohesion, and consistency, and to make the encyclopedia easier and more intuitive to use. For numbers, dates, and similar items in Wikipedia article titles, see the "Naming conventions (numbers and dates)" guideline.
Where this manual gives options, maintain consistency within an article unless there is a good reason to do otherwise. The Arbitration Committee has ruled that editors should not change an article from one guideline-defined style to another without a substantial reason unrelated to mere choice of style; edit-warring over optional styles is unacceptable. If discussion fails to resolve the question of which style to use in an article, defer to the style used by the first major contributor.
General notes
Quotations, titles, etc.
Quotations, titles of books and articles, and similar "imported" text should be faithfully reproduced, even if they use formats or units inconsistent with these guidelines or with other formats in the same article. If necessary, clarify via , article text, or footnotes.
Non-breaking spaces
Guidance on the use of non-breaking spaces ("hard spaces") is given in some sections below, but not all situations in which hard spaces ({{nbsp}} or ) or {{nowrap}} may be appropriate are described.
Chronological items
Statements likely to become outdated
Except on pages that are inherently time-sensitive and updated regularly (e.g. the "Current events" portal), terms such as now, today, currently, present, to date, so far, soon, upcoming, ongoing, and recently should usually be avoided in favor of phrases such as during the 2010s, since 2010, and in August 2020. Wording can usually be modified to remove the "now" perspective: not she is the current director but she became director on 1 January 2024; not 2010–present but beginning in 2010 or since 2010. Terms likely to go out of date include best known for, holds the record for, etc. For current and future events, use phrases such as as of June 2024 or since the beginning of 2024 to signal the time-dependence of the information; use the template {{as of}} (or {{updated}}) in conjunction. Relative-time expressions are acceptable for very long periods, such as geological epochs: Humans diverged from other primates long ago, but only recently developed state legislatures.
Dates, months, and years
- These requirements do not apply to dates in quotations or titles; .
- Special rules apply to citations; .
- See also Wikipedia:Overview of date formatting guidelines.
Formats
| General use | Only in limited situations where brevity is helpful |
Comments |
|---|---|---|
| 2 September 2001 | 2 Sep 2001 | A comma doesn't follow the year unless otherwise required by context:
|
| September 2, 2001 | Sep 2, 2001 | A comma follows the year unless other punctuation obviates it:
|
| 2 September | 2 Sep | Omit year only where there is no risk of ambiguity:
|
| September 2 | Sep 2 | |
| No equivalent for general use | 2001-09-02 | Use yyyy-mm-dd format only with Gregorian dates from 1583 onward. |
| September 2001 | Sep 2001 |
- Dates, years, and other chronological items should be linked only when they are relevant to the subject and likely to be useful to a reader; this rule does not apply to articles that are explicitly on a chronological item, e.g. 2002, 19th century .
- For issues related to dates in sortable tables, and , or consider using
{{dts|Nov 1, 2008}}. - Phrases such as Fourth of July (or July Fourth, but not July 4th), Cinco de Mayo, Seventh of March Speech, and Sete de Setembro are proper names, to which rules for dates do not apply (A typical Fourth of July celebration includes fireworks).
 Unacceptable
|
 Corrected
|
Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Sep. 2 | Sep 2 | Do not add a full stop (period) to an abbreviated month or to the day-of-month. |
| 9. June | 9 June or June 9 | |
| 9 june june 9 |
Months should be capitalized. | |
| 9th June June 9th the 9th of June |
Do not use ordinals (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.). | |
| 09-06 06-09 |
Do not use these formats. | |
| 09 June June 09 |
Do not zero-pad day ... | |
| 2007-4-15 | 2007-04-15 | ... except in all-numeric (yyyy-mm-dd) format, where both month and day should be zero-padded to two digits. |
| 2007/04/15 | Do not use separators other than hyphens. | |
| 20070415 | Do not omit the hyphens. | |
| 07-04-15 | Do not abbreviate year to two digits. | |
| 15-04-2007 04-15-2007 2007-15-04 |
Do not use dd-mm-yyyy, mm-dd-yyyy or yyyy-dd-mm formats. | |
| 2007 April 15 2007 Apr 15 |
Do not use these formats. | |
| 7/2001 7-2001 07-2001 2001-07 2001 July July of 2001 |
July 2001 | Do not use these formats. |