Template:Start date

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This template is used on 240,000 pages.
To avoid large-scale disruption and unnecessary server load, any changes should first be tested in this template's /sandbox or /testcases subpage, or in your own user space. The tested changes can then be added in one single edit to this template. Please consider discussing any changes on the talk page before implementing them.

This template should not be used in citation templates such as Citation Style 1 and Citation Style 2, because it includes markup that will pollute the COinS metadata they produce; see Wikipedia:COinS.

This purpose of the {{start date}} template is to return the date (or date-time) that an event or entity started or was created. It also includes duplicate, machine-readable date (or date-time) in the ISO date format (which is hidden by CSS), for use inside other templates (or table rows) which emit microformats. It should be used only once in each such template and never used outside such templates. The hidden date degrades gracefully when CSS is not available.

When not to use this template

Do not use this template for:

dates that are uncertain e.g., "before 4 April 1933"; "around 18 November 1939".
dates outside the range given under "Limitation", below.
other, secondary dates
outside microformat-emitting templates - if in doubt, see the parent template's documentation
more than one date in any parent template

Syntax

{{start date|year|month|day}}
{{start date|year|month|day|HH|MM|SS|TimeZone}} (MM and SS are optional; TimeZone may be a numerical value, or "Z" for UTC; see examples)

Examples

{{start date|1993}} → "1993 (1993)"
{{start date|1993|02}} → "February 1993 (1993-02)"
{{start date|1993|02|24}} → "February 24, 1993 (1993-02-24)"
{{start date|1993|02|24|08|30}} → "08:30, February 24, 1993 (1993-02-24T08:30)"
{{start date|1993|02|24|08|||+01:00}} → "February 24, 1993 (+01:00) (1993-02-24T08+01:00)"
{{start date|1993|02|24|08|||-07:00}} → "February 24, 1993 (-07:00) (1993-02-24T08-07:00)"
{{start date|1993|02|24|08|30|23}} → "08:30:23, February 24, 1993 (1993-02-24T08:30:23)"
{{start date|1993|02|24|08|30|23|Z}} → "08:30:23, February 24, 1993 (UTC) (1993-02-24T08:30:23Z)"
{{start date|1993|02|24|08|30|23|+01:00}} → "08:30:23, February 24, 1993 (+01:00) (1993-02-24T08:30:23+01:00)"
{{start date|1993|02|24|08|30|23|-07:00}} → "08:30:23, February 24, 1993 (-07:00) (1993-02-24T08:30:23-07:00)"

An optional parameter, df, can be set to "y" or "yes" (or indeed any value) to display the day before the month. This is primarily used in articles using DMY format for dates.

Examples

{{start date|1993|02|24|df=y}} → "24 February 1993 (1993-02-24)"
{{start date|1993|02|24|08|30|df=yes}} → "08:30, 24 February 1993 (1993-02-24T08:30)"

Parameters

This is the TemplateData documentation for the template used by the new VisualEditor.

Start date

<templatedata>{ "description": "Date that an event or entity started or was created", "params": { "1": {"label": "YYYY", "description": "start year", "type": "number"}, "2": {"label": "MM", "description": "start month", "inherits": "1"}, "3": {"label": "DD", "description": "start day of month", "inherits": "1"}, "4": {"label": "HH", "description": "start hours", "inherits": "1"}, "5": {"label": "MM", "description": "start minutes", "inherits": "1", "default": "0"}, "6": {"label": "SS", "description": "start seconds", "inherits": "5"}, "7": {"label": "TZ", "description": "time zone offset, “+02:00”, “-06:00” or “Z” for UTC", "inherits": "1", "type": "string/line"}, "df": {"label": "day first", "description": "boolean parameter to put the date before the month name", "default": "false", "type": "string/line"} }}</templatedata>

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.