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Help:Dates

Possible formats for dates used inside the "Old Style Dates" (OSD) template include:

Source	Rendered as	Comment
1 1657-02-07	07 Feb 1657	yyyy-mm-dd, you must include leading zeros.
2 08 Feb 1657/8	08 Feb 1657/8	The "/8" is optional.
3 9 February 1657/8	09 Feb 1657/8	The "/8" is optional.
4 circa 1658	circa 1658
5 1659	circa 1659
6 ca 1660	circa 1660
7 Jun Q 1661	Jun Q. 1661	The space between the "Q" and the year is optional
8 ca Mar 1662	ca Mar 1662
9 1663/4	circa 1663/4
10 Jun Q. 1665	Jun Q. 1665	The space between the "Q." and the year is optional
11 12/05/1666/7	12 May 1666/7	Is this Dec 5th or 12th May? The software defaults to the latter.
12 December 25th 1668	25 Dec 1668
13 1st January 1669	01 Jan 1669
14 03/1670	ca Mar 1670
15 circa 03/1671	ca Mar 1671
16 June 22, 1672/3	22 Jun 1672/3
17 Dec 21'st 1674	21 Dec 1674
18 21st Dec 1675	21 Dec 1675
19 21'st Dec 1676	21 Dec 1676
20 15 January, 1677	15 Jan 1677
21 15 Dec. 1678	15 Dec 1678
22 #Dec. 1'st, (1679)!	01 Dec 1679
23 Dec Q.1680	Dec Q. 1680
24 #Dec.31'st,(1681)!	31 Dec 1681	No spaces
25 Sep 2,1682	02 Sep 1682

Dates used in templates like "Template:Person" and "Template:Marriage" (see Help:Fields) will be automatically linked to the date pages in Wikipedia, for example 16 Aug 2007. Inline dates used in the text following the templates (e.g, in the Biography section, should have "{{OSD|" and "}} around them so that they, too, will link to Wikipedia. For example, {{OSD|19 Feb 1735/6}} will be rendered as 19 Feb 1735/6. Note the "/6" link will take you to the 1736 entry.

Certain dates (mdate, birth, death) can be suffixed with a reference entry so that the actual date can be inline and the registry can be a footnote. For example

|mdate=24 Jun 1899@<ref>Marriage registered {{#osd:Jun Q 1914}}, Sevenoaks (registry book 2a page 1379)</ref>

Note that this uses a special form of OSD.

 

The OSD template also takes optional parameters that are used in the Chronology to say what the event of the date was. Suppose Charles Sharp Middleton started his journal in circa 1879, you might enter

He started his Coacbuilder's Journal in {{OSD|1879|Started his Coacbuilder's Journal}} at his...

so that there would be a chronological entry

 

1879

circa - Charles Sharp Middleton I Started his Coachbuilder's Journal

Web pages may also have Chronology entries, for example this text:

{{OSD|2007-07-15|Middleton-St.Johns|opened for business}}

created a Help:Chronology entry that looks like this:

 

2007

July 15 (Help:Dates) Middleton-St.Johns opened for business

 

More formally

{{OSD|date|link|reason}}

where link and reason are optional fields. If both are present, the source page link in the chronology will be surrounded by parentheses as the example above shows.

If you wish to preserve the original formatting in a chronology entry, prefix the date with a "~".. For example

Reached 200 names on {{OSD|~October 5th 2007|Middleton-St.Johns|reached 200 names}}.

would be rendered as

 

"Reached 200 names on October 5th 2007." instead of "Reached 200 names on 05 Oct 2007."

 

Invisible chronology entries are possible:

<includeonly>{{OSD|November 19th 2007|Middleton-St.Johns|reached 300 names}}</includeonly>

will put an entry in the Chronology but nothing on the page.