Template:Start date and years ago

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This template shows the date of establishment of an institution, company etc. and its age in years.

This template should not be used for the date of birth or death of people, use {{birth date and age}} or {{death date and age}} instead.

The template requires "YYYY|MM|DD" parameters. Do not use for "YYYY" nor "YYYY|MM" dates.

Usage

{{Start date and years ago|YYYY|MM|DD}} will give Month D, YYYY (XX years ago)

Examples

Using the default American date format

Examples

Syntax	Display
{{Start date and years ago|2009|4|11}}	April 11, 2009 (2009-04-11)
{{Start date and years ago|2007|4|11}}	April 11, 2007 (2007-04-11)
{{Start date and years ago|1812|10|21}}	October 21, 1812 (1812-10-21)
{{Start date and years ago|1812|10|1}}	October 1, 1812 (1812-10-01)

Month First (mf) and Day First (df) options

The df (day first) and mf (month first) parameters indicate the intended date format to display. The appropriate parameter should be set to "y" or "yes" e.g. df=yes or mf=y.

The default output of this template is to display the month before the day (American format). This default may not be appropriate articles about people from parts of the world where the day precedes the month in a date (British/International format). In such articles the parameter, "df", should be set to display the day before the month.

The parameter "mf", while not actually used by the template, will indicate that month first format is intended. Using these parameters can assist bots or other automated processing to detect which date format is intended; leaving the format as default may lead an editor or bot to change the format to an unintended value.

Do not specify both "df" and "mf" parameters in the same use of the template, as these formats are mutually exclusive.

Examples

Syntax	Display
{{Start date and years ago|1993|2|24|df=yes}}	24 February 1993 (1993-02-24)
{{Start date and years ago|1993|2|24|df=y}}	24 February 1993 (1993-02-24)
{{Start date and years ago|1993|2|24|mf=yes}}	February 24, 1993 (1993-02-24)
{{Start date and years ago|1993|2|24|mf=y}}	February 24, 1993 (1993-02-24)

Hard return

When you want the "(# years ago)" to start at the next line rather than letting it soft-return, use the "br=1" parameter to hard-return it.

Example

Syntax	Display
{{Start date and years ago|1993|2|24|br=1}}	February 24, 1993 (1993-02-24)

Use in microformats

This template also returns the date, hidden by CSS, in the ISO 8601 format needed by one or more of the following microformats:

• hAtom (class="updated")
• hAudio (class="published")
• hCalendar (class="dtstart")
• hCard (class="bday")

usually, but not always, within infobox or similar templates, or tables.

Its use in hCard is for organisations, venues and similar; use {{Birth date}} or {{Birth date and age}} for people.

Similarly, {{End date}} returns the date as hCalendar's (class="dtend").

See en:WP:UF for further details.

Limitation

This template has no provision to deal with a date in a non-Gregorian calendar. Also, ISO 8601 requires mutual agreement among those exchanging information before using years outside the range 1583–9999 CE. Therefore, use of this template for non-Gregorian dates or dates outside that range constitutes a false claim of conformance to the ISO 8601 standard.

Any editor encountering such usage should change the date to plain text with no template; or if not confident in doing so, raise the matter on this template's talk page.

See the microformats project for further details.