Wikipedia:Naming conventions (numbers and dates): Difference between revisions

This page documents an English Wikipedia naming conventions. Editors should generally follow it, though exceptions may apply. Substantive edits to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on this guideline's 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.

By convention, an article name that is a number (in Arabic numerals) represents a year^[1]. 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.

For years BC, the format is "<year number> BC", for example 44 BC.

So, if some numbers, that don't indicate a year, have a specific meaning, an additional qualifier or disambiguation technique is needed:

• for articles on a number as such, the bracketed qualifier (number) is added, e.g. 3 (number)
• Other:
  • 36 (film), not 36 (the year Pontius Pilate was called back to Rome);
  • Intel 80386, not 386 (the year the Northern Wei Dynasty began to rule China);
  • Form 1040, not 1040 (the year Macbeth became King of Scotland);
  • Nineteen Eighty-Four for the George Orwell novel, not 1984 (the year Marvin Gaye died).

Nonetheless some numbers above a normal date range have another topic than a year, e.g. 4711.

Note that numbers in Roman numerals are usually pages that redirect to:

• the related number article for lower numbers, e.g. VII redirects to 7 (number)
• the related year article for higher numbers, e.g. MMVI redirects to 2006

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 corresponding number page: for instance both "Ⅰ" (0x2160) and "ⅰ" (0x2170) redirect to 1 (number). 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).

• All days of a year cycle have an article in the format "<Month> <day number>", e.g. February 27 [[February 27]] which displays as February 27, depending on your date preferences.
• Additionally, days from some recent years (currently: 2003–2005) have an article with a title in the format "<Month> <day number>, <year>", e.g. February 27, 2003 - these articles on a specific day of a specific year can be reached from the "<Month> <day number>" articles via the {{ThisDateInRecentYears}} template. With the parameters Month=February and Day=27, this template shows as follows:

• Of course there are also the articles Monday to Sunday, without numbers in the article name.

• Format: "<year ending on 0>s( BC)", e.g. 1970s, 40s BC (see: Category:Years by decade)

• Format: "<number>th century( BC)", e.g. 3rd century BC (see: Category:Centuries)

• Format: "<number>th millennium( BC)", e.g. 2nd millennium (see Category:Millennia)

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?".

A format for separate articles on events that recur at regular intervals is as follows:

<Name of event> ()

Where:

• <Name of event> is the existing article title (non-redirect) that describes the event;
• is used only as a disambiguator, giving no more detail than is needed for disambiguation, which would be a year in most cases.

Example: Summer Olympics

• The article is at Summer Olympic Games (and not at "Summer Olympics" or "Olympic games" or "Summer olympics", etc...)
• The year suffices as time indicator, the month in which the Olympics were held is superfluous information, not retained in the article title;
• Formats like "Xth olympiad", etc. are not withheld to do the disambiguation of the article titles (though such formats may be used for redirect pages)
• So, for instance: Summer Olympic Games (1920) for the VII Olympiad, held in Antwerp.

Example: Champions league football competition

• The article is at UEFA Champions League
• A season is played starting in one year, and ending the next: time indication comprises two years
• Thus, for instance, UEFA Champions League (2005-2006) (note that each year is written in full, separated by a hyphen)

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.

Example: U.S. presidential election, 2000

Although, in general, use of punctuation marks in article names is discouraged, this format with a comma is widely used (according to some testing this even appears to be the most used format for several types of events), so it is an acceptable format for Wikipedia page names.

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 occured).

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); May 1968, 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 avoided (e.g., May '68 → May 1968); for centuries numerals are given in text, capitalised (e.g., Crisis of the 3rd century → Crisis of the Third Century)

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:

• Four year plan
• Hundred Years' War

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 (names and titles), Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Western 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):

The essence of the [ancient Romans naming] convention is to use the shortest unambiguous name as the title of the article, and to add a dated biographical detail, such as the date of a consulship, if the full name is shared by several. If a reliable birth year is not available (which is usually the case), the biographical detail should be the first time in the highest office recorded for the individual. [...] Since Lucius Valerius Flaccus is shared by a number of notable Romans, the first should be at Lucius Valerius Flaccus (consul 195 BC), while a later non-consul is Lucius Valerius Flaccus (praetor 63 BC).

Examples illustrate the various ways dates and numbers can show up in article names.

Straße des 17. Juni

Name of a street in Berlin. The name of this street refers to a date ("17th of June") - the whole is kept in German, while that's the way the street is referred to, also in English. Note that the point after the number 17 is the German way of writing what in English translates to "th" (in German this point is pronounced as "ten").

October Revolution

Traditional name for this stage of the Russian revolution - although it took place in November according to Gregorian calendar: both the October 25 and the November 7 article mention the event, the first according to Julian calendar, the second according to Gregorian calendar.

The Excursions of Mr. Broucek on the Moon and in the 15th Century

Opera by Janacek - "Century" with a capital and "15th" (not "Fifteenth"), according to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (operas).

Symphony No. 0 - String Quartet No. 10 (Beethoven) - 1. X. 1905 - etc

Numbering and naming of compositions according to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (pieces of music). "1. X. 1905" is nothing more than a date (which happens to be the name of a musical composition), but since, as a date, it is in a format not similar to any notation format that is used in English, it doesn't need to be disambiguated from calendar-related articles.

E17

Letter/number combination with various meanings, so this leads to a disambiguation page.

HMS Tiara (P351) - A-B Helicopters A/W 95 - etc

Several vehicle names contain combinations of numbers and/or letters, see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships), Wikipedia:Naming conventions (aircraft), etc.

XIII

Disambiguation page from which, for example, 13 (number) and XIII (comic) can be reached.

Titanic (1953 film) - 36 (film) - Ocean's Twelve - etc

Film titles according to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (films).

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea - Paris in the 20th Century - etc

Titles of books (and other publications) use the conventional way the (English version) of the publication's title is printed. See also: Wikipedia:Naming conventions#Literary works.

Queen Elizabeth II - Queen Elizabeth 2

Both are redirect pages, the first to the queen ("II" used as ordinal in the name of a royal person), the second to the ship ("2" used as a number, in a ship's name).

4th of July - Fourth of July

Another example of two redirect pages, that go another way, depending on the way the number is written: the first redirects to the July 4 day article, the one with the text version of the number redirects to Independence Day (United States).

September 11, 2001 attacks

a.k.a. 9/11 - several options for the name of this page were considered (and the page has a high number of redirects pointing towards it) - however the final choice of the page name is far from setting a "standard" for formatting page names containing a date.

1. ^ Without going too technical, for standard use in articles on time periods, a "year" is defined as:

   • according to Gregorian calendar for years from 1582 on;
   • according to Julian calendar, counting back from 1582, for the years 1 to 1581
   • according to the (proleptic) Julian calendar, counting back from 1 (without year zero) for the years 1 BC and older.

   Note, however, that also after 1581 some countries continued the Julian calendar, see Old Style and New Style dates. Occasionally for years from 1582 to well in the 20th century (when the last countries converted to Gregorian calendar), dates in the "year"/"day" articles are mentioned not according to Gregorian calendar: in these cases add a notification according to which calendar!!!

   This might seem complicated: see the October Revolution example above, and the entry of the start of that revolution both in the October 25 and the November 7 articles.