Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers/Archive 74

message: :: Looking to the ISO 8601 standard "1901-05" means "1901 May", so you need to specify "1901-1905" for a date range to remove that ambiguity.
:::Since the use of Month/Year dates in that format is not (surely to God) permissable in article text, there should be no ambiguity. Johnbod 00:40, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yep, and in any case would be hyphenated, not en dashed (although that distinction might not be conveyed to the quick reader). Should numerical month-year expressions be discouraged in the point elsewhere on the page that deals with ISO dates? I suspect so. Tony 02:12, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I suppose people want to use them in tables - "date joined team", "date released" and so on. It ought to be easy enough to avoid confusion in those cases. Johnbod 02:20, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: '''2004-05'''

message: Perhaps  should follow whatever the standard is.  (SEWilco 22:13, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I can't see what the point of this template is. Does it save typing? Does is avoid repetition of the year, if it's the same? (no) Tony 05:53, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template:daterange 

message: Why do some people insist on spelling out every 'month' date, i.e. "17 October 2005" instead of "17 Oct 2005" and then cite this page? I see nothing on this page that says that dates must be spelled out in full...Ryoung122 07:33, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In section "Incorrect date formats", it states 'Always express a month as a whole word' and 'Do not use abbreviations like "Feb" ...', which seems pretty clear. Chris the speller 13:33, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I never knew until now that abbreviated months also respect readers' preferred date order: compare 17 Oct 17 Oct with Oct 17 Oct 17. Nevertheless, I agree with spelling them out. Stephen Turner (Talk) 15:12, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

text: Actually, they don't. On my system, your examples are order-preserved (i.e., they show up as "17 Oct" and "Oct 17". Urhixidur 15:24, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: They do for me. I suspect this depends on the skin. I'm using monobook. DES (talk) 18:16, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

text: Do you have date preferences set, Urhixidur? What do October 17 and 17 October show up like? Stephen Turner (Talk) 01:55, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: both follow my date preferences, using unmodified monobook set to number first Modest Genius talk 19:58, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Abbreviations for months

message: I'll bring mine to the party. The Chicago Manual of Style 15th ed., which I believe is the most comprehensive style guide on the planet – my copy weighs 3.2 lbs. (400 kg), at over 950 pages – says to use "a.m.", lower case, regular font, and with periods, or (in typesetting to use small-capitals without periods, but not regular capitals:  "PM" (in normal caps), "am" (which is a normal English word; see elsewhere on this talk page for this periodlessness problem with "is" and "gal", etc.), and especially "P.M." (normal or small caps) are "wrong".  All of these things are prescriptivist as hell, but Chicago's take that upper case (whether regular or small-caps) acronyms and the like are not dotted is pretty well supported in general usage.  No one but my grandmother would write N.A.S.A.  PS: I have to observe that all of this stuff is culturally in wild flux.  I have books that are not as old as me that refer to "327 B.C." (not "BC"), and I even have one that used "B.C.E." - must've had a stodgy editor, willing to accept the new terms, but not to give up personally internalize punctuation methods.  Hmm.  Reminds me of someone...  Maybe I should become an editor.  Oh, I already am.  I just don't get paid for it.  <heavy sigh>.  — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont]  ‹(-¿-)› 21:48, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: PS: By contrast, Strunk and White's Elements of Style uses periods with every abbreviation and acronym, period, but it is considered stodgy (and I don't mean the 1920's edition, I mean the new 4th ed., revised by Edward A. Tenney and Oliver Struck, who I assume to be Wm. Strunk Jr.'s son).  Fowler's Modern Usage (newest ver, Burchfield's Oxford rev. 3rd ed.) doesn't (that I've found so far) address the topic directly, but examples in prose throughout show a "period-happy" style as well (and it is a British edition, not American).  My conclusions are that traditional style guides prefer periods, period; general ones like Chicago have a hybridized approach with some fairly compelling (and real-world-usage-based) logic, and the science market style manuals, like the ALA are very "death to periods!" in attitude.  If I can find my copy, I'll see what the Wired Guide to Online Style from around the peak of the dot-com bubble ays (not "authoriative" from a prescriptivist point of view, but probably the only book of its kind, not counting entirely virtual competitors that are newer (but necessary probably delve a lot into post-blog (which also means post-IM, post-texting) style concerns, most of which I for one consider to be degradatory not progressive. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont]  ‹(-¿-)› 21:48, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: What about actual sources?