Template:Start date/doc

This is a documentation subpage for Template:Start date.
It may contain usage information, categories and other content that is not part of the original template page.

This template is used on 6,000+ pages and changes may be widely noticed. Test changes in the template's /sandbox or /testcases subpages, or in your own user subpage. Consider discussing 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 for this template used by TemplateWizard, VisualEditor and other tools. See a monthly parameter usage report for Template:Start date in articles based on its TemplateData.

TemplateData for Start date

Date that an event or entity started or was created

Template parameters
Parameter		Description	Type	Status
YYYY	`1`	start year	Number	optional
MM	`2`	start month	Number	optional
DD	`3`	start day of month	Number	optional
HH	`4`	start hours	Number	optional
MM	`5`	start minutes Default 0	Number	optional
SS	`6`	start seconds Default 0	Number	optional
TZ	`7`	time zone offset, “+02:00”, “-06:00” or “Z” for UTC	Line	optional
day first	`df`	boolean parameter to put the date before the month name Default false	Line	optional

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 organizations, 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 the microformats project 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.