Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers

It has been 126 days since the outbreak
of the latest dispute over date formats.

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Singular/plural for mixed units

When I made this edit [1] it seemed perfectly obvious, but on reflection I realize I just don't know. In other words, which are correct?

• (A) 6 foot 5 inches and 6 foot 1 inch or
• (B) 6 feet 5 inches and 6 feet 1 inch

(Obviously there's no issue about the inch/inches.) Our current text on mixed units old version doesn't explicitly address the question. Thoughts? EEng 01:57, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

It's just an idiomatic English usage of "foot" instead of "feet" for plural units. For no apparent reason, it is perfectly normal to say "he is six foot tall", but I can think of no other unit where that applies – "the pitch is 100 yards long", "the candle is 5 inches high", etc. Of course, "he is six feet tall" is just as acceptable, but my feeling is that it's rather less common, certainly here in the UK. I wouldn't worry about it. --RexxS (talk) 02:25, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

FWIW I’ve heard “ton” used similarly where one would usually expect a plural, as in “She had three ton of fish in her hold.” But I regard this usage as colloquial or dialect, not suitable for a formal register.—Odysseus1479 03:05, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Also FWIW, anecdotally, I often hear "six foot two", never "six feet two", but "six feet two inches" and never "six foot two inches". Primergrey (talk) 03:33, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

• I realize I'm not thinking about this clearly. Let's get away from feet/inches for a second. Are we agreed that (C) is wrong and (D) is right?

• (C) 6 gallon 5 ounces and   6 gallon 1 ounce
• (D) 6 gallons 5 ounces and 6 gallons 1 ounce

EEng 02:33, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

US or imperial? :p

Yes.—Odysseus1479 03:05, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Yessir. Primergrey (talk) 03:34, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ OK, good. I think Primergrey's comment is the key: I often hear "six foot two", never "six feet two", but "six feet two inches" and never "six foot two inches". Clearly we're never going to say merely "A six foot two man" in an article, so that decides it: we're agreed that (B) and (D) are correct, (A) and (C) wrong? EEng 03:43, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

I'd appreciate it if a few of you could take a look old version. EEng 04:03, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Can't imagine it looking any righter :>)

That'll do, I guess. Primergrey (talk) 05:04, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

That makes me kind of sad, like I'll never achieve this level of perfection again. Please take it back. EEng 05:23, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. We don't want to tempt fate. EEng 08:07, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

I object to this change. It does not address the subject of date formats. Kendall-K1 (talk) 14:45, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

The sad thing is that in a moment someone will actually start arguing about date-format implications of human height. EEng 15:42, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Actually, we would say "a six-foot man" because it's being used as an adjective directly in that sort of construction: "a four-inch stick"; a "ten-ton weight"; etc. The colloquialism is when it's used as a predicate: "the man was six foot tall" - I never hear "the man was six feet tall", although it's technically correct. --RexxS (talk) 17:13, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

• What I said is that we'd never write (in an article) "A six foot two man" -- instead we'd write "A man six feet two inches tall" or somesuch. I'm sure you'll agree with that.
• You're right that "a six-foot man" is acceptable, but remember we're talking here about mixed units, so "a six-foot man" is out of scope of this discussion, and unaffected by the change I made. I suppose that leaves the question of "a six-foot one-inch man", but there are some doors man was never meant to open on which see below.
• "The man was six foot tall" is what I must have been thinking of when I made this edit [2],but it's a colloquialism we'd never use in an article (which is why I immediately reverted myself). BTW, "The man was six feet tall" seems perfectly natural to me.

I take it you're OK with my edit (linked a few posts back)? EEng 02:10, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

(later) Well, I must be slipping. I myself wrote the phrase four-foot, eleven-inch carved-wood effigy in Sacred Cod, so I guess we should address that form. See my further edit old version. EEng 06:24, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

(even later) And now I further realize that I'm not sure whether a comma should be included in the adjectival form i.e.

four-foot, eleven-inch carved-wood effigy

versus

four-foot eleven-inch carved-wood effigy

Someone please deliver me from this hell. Tony1? SMcCandlish? EEng 11:14, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

• The confusion is happening because the "plural foot" usage is a compound modifier which should be hyphenated (if we used it at all): "He is six-foot tall" and "He is six feet tall" are both "correct" (idiomatic, though the first is colloquial). Yet the hyphen is not used when working with unit symbols instead of spelled-out units (whether the number is spelled out or not), resulting in the following possible variants: "The statue is 15-foot tall" (colloquial), "The statue is 15 feet tall" (clear), "The statue is 15 ft tall" (don't abbreviate in running prose), "It is a 15-foot statue" (clear), "It is a 15 ft statue" (don't abbreviate in running prose), while "It is a 15[-]feet statue" is just ungrammatical, hyphenated or not. Regardless, that "The statue is 15-foot tall" (or "The statue is 15 ft tall") usage here is obviously a colloquialism from the construction industry and isn't encyclopedic writing (it's an inversion of common adjectival usage like "six-foot man", "15-foot statue", "four-foot eleven-inch pipe", etc., which are not colloquial. And no, the last of those should never have a comma in it. Also, yes, the "He is six-feet two" variant exists and is in wide use (as above, "He is six-foot two" is using a compound adjective, "He is six feet two" is not); both patterns are common in the US, though maybe on a regional basis. But we should never be clipping the final unit off in encyclopedic writing anyway.

  What we need to do is:

  1. Distinguish better between usage of symbols and of words – "The statue is 5 metres (16 feet 5 inches) tall" versus "The statue is 5 metres (16 ft 5 in) tall", and definitely not "The statue is 5 metres (16 foot 5 inch) tall" or "The statue is 5 metre (...) tall". This rule seems to only appear in a complex table. It might be best to summarize the key points of (the most frequently sought items from) that table above it and perhaps also import these into the corresponding section at the main MoS page.
  2. Advise against the symbol use except in tables, inside parenthetical conversions, and other "cramped quarters" (note that {{Convert}} generates symbols not words in the parentheticals automatically unless forced not to). This is also a point worth including in MoS-main. But it should not be required to abbreviate in such circumstances, especially since elsewhere MoS says to use the unabbreviated form on first occurrence for any unit that may not be familiar to all readers, and there are other circumstances in which the symbol may be confusing; e.g. in for inch[es] is obviously easily confused with the preposition in.
  3. Specifically advise against "He is six-foot tall" (and "He is 6 ft tall") as a colloquial style to be avoided. Also advise against the especially colloquial abbreviated version that drops the second unit, "He is six-foot two" and "He is six feet two".
  4. Mention that a construction like "four-foot eleven-inch pipe" does not take a comma (wrong: "four-foot, eleven-inch pipe"); it is a single measure, and the adjectives are chained and hierarchical (as in "a big brown dog", which is never given idiomatically by native speakers as "a brown big dog"), not in competition with each other for importance (as in "that stupid, lazy, aggressive, untrainable dog").
  5. As usual, advise rewriting any construction that may be awkward or confusing.

      — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  23:59, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Crikey, SM, can you start by just saying whether this updated version of the guidance on mixed units has any problems? Most of what you're saying is already in there. Feel free to make bold edits, of course. EEng 04:24, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Midnight departures

Which dates do we use for departures at midnight? For example, Maggie Hassan's resignation as Governor of New Hampshire took effect at midnight 3 January 2017. Do we use 2 January or 3 January, as the departure date? GoodDay (talk) 14:33, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

How about either 24:00 2 January or 00:00 3 January. Both terms are unambiguous and acceptable. In general the only (very minor) thing to be aware of is if a leap second is added: 24:00:00 is followed by 00:00:00 rather than being the same. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 14:49, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

What's got me curious about this matter, is the departure dates used for the last several Mexican Presidents & the departure dates used for New York governors. Those use November 30 & December 31 (instead of December 1 & January 1) respectively. GoodDay (talk) 14:56, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

@Martin of Sheffield: Isn't the leap second 23:59:60 instead? Pppery 21:14, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

You've got me thinking now - I'm sure I've seen 24:00/00:00 for it on a clock chip, but I think you may be correct on standard policy. If you are right, then there is not even a minor problem. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 22:45, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

• This is why strikes and ceasefire sometimes take effect at 12:01 am. Executions, too. EEng 15:09, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Likewise railway timetables (or else 23:59). Martin of Sheffield (talk) 15:23, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Except unlike executions, railways have arrivals as well as departures. EEng 15:45, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

You obvious haven't tried travelling on Southern recently ... :-) Martin of Sheffield (talk) 15:54, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Every edit is a mistake (understanding is left as an exercise for the reader)

So I come here for reassurance and get soooo confused. This edit back in March 2014 tried to shorten the (apparently) obnoxiously long list of examples:

  •  fifty-six

  •  five hundred

  •  four hundred seven or four hundred and seven

  •  two thousand four hundred sixty-six or two thousand four hundred and sixty-six

in section Numbers as figures or words. Currently the complete examples of the rule are

"larger ones are not (fifty-six, five hundred)".

Now I may be dysfunctional but reading that says to me that the examples of "larger ones" includes both 'fifty-six' and 'five hundred'.

The original examples included one example hyphenated and three examples not hyphenated. This lent itself to comparison between the examples, eliciting understanding that 'fifty-six' should be hyphenated, the others not. This was lost in the attempt at neatening up.

Which would be better? Changing this to "(fifty-six, but not five hundred)" or simply restoring the original list of four examples? I feel having more examples is nearly always better, and especially apt when reading comprehension is impaired. (Shenme says 'hiya!')   Shenme (talk) 06:11, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Actually, you're misreading what the rule is (correctly, if confusingly) trying to say, but I'm too tired to explain. Anyway, I added an example which I think fixes the confusion. EEng 07:39, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Italics for foreign units

According to MOS:FOREIGNITALIC, foreign terms that aren't commonly used in English should be italicised. This probably applies to foreign units such as the Japanese tsubo or the Thai rai. This isn't spelled out in MOSNUM, however, and there's the possibility of conflict with preferred style for units, whose symbols are generally set in roman (as opposed to variables, which are in italics).

I've been discussing adding italics to some such units in Template:Convert, and it's been suggested that further input be requested here first. So, should foreign units be italicised, following the above? Or is there more reason not to? --Paul_012 (talk) 08:08, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

From a quick look, I think these are the units known to convert that might be affected.

• {{convert|100|arpent|lk=in}} → 100 arpents (34 ha)
• {{convert|100|pyeong|lk=in}} → 100 pyeong (330 m²)
• {{convert|100|rai|lk=in}} → 100 rai (160,000 m²)
• {{convert|100|dunam|lk=in}} → 100 dunams (0.10 km²; 0.039 sq mi)
• {{convert|100|shaku|lk=in}} → 100 shaku (30 m)
• {{convert|100|viss|lk=in}} → 100 viss (160 kg)

Johnuniq (talk) 09:00, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

I see no conflict myself. As Paul points out, the requirement for upright is for unit symbols, not the unit names. It seems reasonable to treat unit names in the same way as any other foreign words. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 10:20, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Discussion of unit name capitalization in infoboxes

Please see Template talk:Infobox unit#RfC: capitalization rule for name parameter, about whether a unit name that appears at the top of an infobox should be capitalized or not. Jc3s5h (talk) 20:24, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for a small gesture

In all seriousness, I want to thank WikiOriginal-9 for taking the time to reduce the GDQ (gloom-and-doom quotient) of this guideline [3]. EEng 21:58, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Please refrain from inventing acronyms. Primergrey (talk) 00:26, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

This is your only warning; if you invent a new acronym again, you may be asked to write a date format essay without further notice. Kendall-K1 (talk) 03:50, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Ha! It's not an acronym – it's an initialism! Na na nuh na na! I WP:WIN! You may now start WP:WHINING! EEng 04:00, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

400 year frequency problem

A reader writes in at WP:OTRS ticket:2017020210016846. This reader released their email with a free license, specifically, "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported and GNU Free Documentation License (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts)".

---

This has always bothered me, and I'm not sure how to fix the issue outside of going in and editing each of the 366 days of the year pages, so I'm hoping you have a way of correcting this easier than I can.

At the top of each of these pages (such as today's - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_2 ) , wikipedia states the frequency of that day being on a particular day of the week (for a 400 year period). for example, today states

This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday (58 in 400 years each) than on Sunday or Monday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Wednesday or Friday (56).

While this may be true for some arbitrary selected span of 400 years, if you took a different span of 400 years, the results would be different. This is similar to stating that February 2 always falls on Thursdays (when observing for one year - 2017)

The day of the week in which a specific date falls on rotates through a 28 year rotation. so every 28 years, any day of the year will land on a Sunday 4 times, Monday 4 times, Tuesday 4 times, etc.

If instead of a 400 year period, you had selected a multiple of 28, and used either 392 or 420, you would have found that each day would have fallen equally on each day of the week.

I realize I say "you" when I know that wikipedia is edited by people all over the world, but I think this error should be corrected from each of the date pages as it is incorrect.

---

Anyone with comments should reply here, and I will direct the person to read here. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:47, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Maybe put a "citation needed" template after that? But seriously, I don't think this falls under the "simple arithmetic requires no citation" exclusion. Rather than decide whether it's true or not, shouldn't we require an inline source citation? This seems to come from Template:Day, and an entry in the history there says it's from [4]. @Crissov: know anything about this? Kendall-K1 (talk) 17:58, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

FTR our articles are correct. The OTRS OP's premise is mistaken because s/he does not take account of the century leap year rule in the Gregorian calendar.

If you take them into account, then 400 Gregorian years divides into an even number of weeks. But since 400 doesn't divide into 7, there is no way that the weekdays can be evenly split over dates in that period. As our article correctly notes, they are not. Kahastok talk 18:46, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

I would think the result would be a bit different if one were considering the Julian calendar vs. the Gregorian calendar. Jc3s5h (talk) 20:51, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Maybe, but the day articles like February 2 are explicitly about that date on the Gregorian calendar. Kendall-K1 (talk) 21:28, 3 February 2017 (UTC)