Old Style and New Style dates

Old Style (O.S.) and New Style (N.S.) are terms sometimes used with dates to indicate that the calendar convention used at the time described is different from that in use at the time the document was being written. There were two calendar changes in Great Britain and its colonies, which may sometimes complicate matters: the first was to change the start of the year from Lady Day (25 March) to 1 January; the second was to discard the Julian calendar in favour of the Gregorian calendar.Death warrant of Charles I web page of the UK National Archives. A demonstration of New Style, meaning Julian calendar with a start of year adjustment.Stockton, J.R. Date Miscellany I: The Old and New Styles "The terms 'Old Style' and 'New Style' are now commonly used for both the 'Start of Year' and 'Leap Year' [(Gregorian calendar)] changes (England & Wales: both in 1752; Scotland: 1600, 1752). I believe that, properly and historically, the 'Styles' really refer only to the 'Start of Year' change (from March 25th to January 1); and that the 'Leap Year' change should be described as the change from Julian to Gregorian."Spathaky, Mike Old Style and New Style Dates and the change to the Gregorian Calendar. "Before 1752, parish registers, in addition to a new year heading after 24th March showing, for example '1733', had another heading at the end of the following December indicating '1733/4'. This showed where the Historical Year 1734 started even though the Civil Year 1733 continued until 24th March. ... We as historians have no excuse for creating ambiguity and must keep to the notation described above in one of its forms. It is no good writing simply 20th January 1745, for a reader is left wondering whether we have used the Civil or the Historical Year. The date should either be written 20th January 1745 OS (if indeed it was Old Style) or as 20th January 1745/6. The hyphen (1745-6) is best avoided as it can be interpreted as indicating a period of time." Closely related is the custom of dual dating, where writers gave two consecutive years to reflect differences in the starting date of the year, or to include both the Julian and Gregorian dates.
Beginning in 1582, the Gregorian calendar replaced the Julian in Roman Catholic countries. This change was implemented subsequently in Protestant and Orthodox countries, usually at much later dates. In England and Wales, Ireland, and the British colonies, the change to the start of the year and the changeover from the Julian calendar occurred in 1752 under the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750. In Scotland, the legal start of the year had already been moved to 1 January (in 1600), but Scotland otherwise continued to use the Julian calendar until 1752. Thus "New Style" can either refer to the start of year adjustment, or to the adoption of the Gregorian calendar. 
In Russia, new style dates came into use in early 1918. Other countries in Eastern Orthodoxy adopted new style dating for their civil calendars but most continue to use the Julian calendar for religious use. In English-language histories of other countries (especially Russia), the Anglophone OS/NS convention is often used to identify which calendar is being used when giving a date.
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==References==
==Sources==
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==External links==
*Details of conversion for many countries
*Side-by-side Old style–New style reference
*Time to Take Note: The 1752 Calendar Change
*Calendar Converter – Date converter for many systems, from John Walker
*Calendar converter to ancient Attic, Armenian, Coptic, and Ethiopian by Academy of Episteme
Category:Gregorian calendar
Category:Julian calendar
Category:Time in the United Kingdom