Usage  {{}} is for automatically generating all category tags related to birth and death years, including living people and missing or unknown values. The general DEFAULTSORT can be embedded as well.   {{|year of birth|year of death|sort key}}  will replace:   {{DEFAULTSORT:sort key}}  [[Category:BIRTH births]]  [[Category:DEATH deaths]]  Other cases are handled with options, see below. As with the original, the embedded magic word DEFAULTSORT also applies to all categories on the page, nomatter whether the lifetime template is before or after them.  This template supports optional substitution. If you want to substitute it, use the following syntax:   {{subst:|year of birth|year of death|sort key|subst=subst:}}  Since Categories are preferred to be listed in most-common order, the  template should generally be placed after the last Category tag, for example:   [[Category:ABC]]  :  [[Category:XYZ]]  {{|year of birth|year of death|sort key}}  Options  For each option, the default value is displayed in bold and automatically assumed if the field is left blank.  Please note that MISSING results in Categories that are not displayed on the page.   1 (birth)  MISSING : when year seems possible to be found.  :Category:Year of birth missing or :Category:Year of birth missing (living people)  year of birth : such as "1899" or known approximations such as "1890s" or "19th-century" (note the hyphen).  :Category:1899 births or :Category:1890s births or :Category:19th-century births   2 (death)  LIVING : living or assumed living people.  :Category:Living people  MISSING : believed dead and year seems possible to be found.  :Category:Year of death missing  year of death : such as "1986" or known approximations such as  "1980s" or "20th-century" (note the hyphen).  :Category:1986 deaths or :Category:1980s deaths or :Category:20th-century deaths   3 (sortkey)  {{PAGENAME}} : should usually never be left blank (especially with Asian names, it is hard to make the difference between a missing sortkey and a sortkey identical to the article name due to a family-first name).  Asian name, Honorific prefix (qualifier suffix) : for assertion of sortkey assessment.  "Mao, Zedong" - "Kim, Il-sung" - "Matsuo Bashō|Matsuo, Basho" - "Nu, U" - "Wang, Li (politician)"  Family name, Given name, Honorific-prefix (qualifier suffix) : for proper sorting.  "Newton, Isaac, Sir" - "Karlsson, Ove (sports journalist)"  For further details, see Wikipedia:Categorization of people#Ordering names in a category.  Most values are case-insensitive ("LIVING" or "LiVinG" work the same), except when it matters (such as century names).  Examples   For a living person  {{|1899||Surname, Name}} or  {{|1899|LIVING|Surname, Name}} will replace:  {{DEFAULTSORT:Surname, Name}}  [[Category:1899 births]]  [[Category:Living people]]   For a missing birth and living person  {{|||Surname, Name}} or  {{|MISSING|LIVING|Surname, Name}} will replace:  {{DEFAULTSORT:Surname, Name}}  [[Category:Year of birth missing (living people)]]  [[Category:Living people]]   For a dead person  {{|1899|1986|Surname, Name}} will replace:  {{DEFAULTSORT:Surname, Name}}  [[Category:1899 births]]  [[Category:1986 deaths]]   Etc.  Technical  Before changing the template's code or text, please bear in mind some points that should be preserved:   The template's name and its aliases are in all-caps and feature the suffix -SORT so as to clue in editors that it embeds and replaces DEFAULTSORT. (The original alias "BD" was renamed and is unlisted for the same reason.)  The seemingingly useless extra bars in the switch statements are for empty values.  Extra whitespace around years doesn't matter, because page titles (category names in this case) are not sensitive to extra spaces. Calls such as  will produce the wikitext [[Category:     1899     births]], but the extra spaces do not change the effect of the link, see :Category:     1899     births.   Please, do not edit war by replacing DEFAULTSORT, xxxx births, yyyy deaths with this template, or the opposite.  The template provides a local sandbox and testcases for developing and testing changes (see documentation's hatnote).  See also   Help:Category#Default sort key, about categories and DEFAULTSORT  Help:Magic words#Parser functions, about DEFAULTSORT technically