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Template:Start date and age

The {{Start date and age}} template displays the date that an event or entity started or was created. It also includes a duplicate, machine-readable date in the ISO 8601 format (which is hidden by CSS), for use inside other templates which emit microformats. The hidden date degrades gracefully when CSS is not available.

Common usage

{{Start date and age|yyyy|mm|dd}} to display formatted as:

March 25, 2010; 14 years ago (2010-03-25)

{{Start date and age|yyyy|mm|dd|df=yes}} to display formatted as:

25 March 2010; 14 years ago (2010-03-25)

Full syntax

{{Start date and age|yyyy|mm|dd|df=yes|p=yes|br=yes}} to display formatted as:

25 March 2010
(14 years ago) (2010-03-25)

The default output of this template is to display the month before the day (MDY). This default may not be appropriate for articles about events or entities in parts of the world where dates are commonly given with the day preceding the month (DMY). To display the day first, assign the df parameter a value of yes, y, or 1 (e.g. df=yes).

If the default format is preferred, the parameter df may be used with value of no, n, or 0 (e.g. df=no). These values can assist bots or other automated processing to detect the intended date format; omitting the df parameter may lead an editor or bot to change the format to an unintended value.

The preference to display the month first may also be indicated via the parameter mf (e.g. mf=yes). While not actually used by the template, this is another method of indicating that the default format is intended. Do not specify both "df" and "mf" parameters in the same use of the template.

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.

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.

• {{Start date and age|2016|12|31}} → December 31, 2016; 7 years ago (2016-12-31)

  December&nbsp;31, 2016<span class="noprint">&#059;&#032;7 years ago</span><span style="display:none">&#160;(<span class="bday dtstart published updated">2016-12-31</span>)</span>

This template is most often used in infoboxes in articles about buildings or organizations, identifying when they were started/founded/opened or dissolved/ended/closed.

It has also been used for naval ships to indicate their commissioned age; however, several Wikipedia editors have reverted such edits. Use of this template in ship articles is therefore not recommended.

• Template:MONTHNAME – display name of month for a given number 1 (January) through 12 (December).
• Template:Time ago – display number of days, months, or years ago (for dates given as |yyyy|mm|dd).
• Template:Years or months ago – display number of months or years ago (for dates given as |yyyy|mmor|yyyy).
• Template:Yesno – allows optional formatting parameters to accept values other than "yes" (such as "y" or "1").

• {{Start date}}
• {{Time ago}} and {{Years or months ago}}
• {{Age}}