Template:Start date
Template documentation
- Purpose
- Formats a publication/release “start date” so that:
- **Humans** see a friendly date (
12 December 1991orOctober 1992) - **Machines/search engines** get an ISO-8601 timestamp via the HTML
<time>element, improving metadata and accessibility.
- Syntax
{{Start date|year|month|day}}
- Parameters
| # | Name | Mandatory | Example | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | year |
Yes | 1991 | 4-digit year |
| 2 | month |
Yes | 12 | 1–12 (leading zero optional) |
| 3 | day |
No | 25 | 1–31.
Omit for year-month precision. |
- Examples
| Wikitext | Renders as |
|---|---|
{{Start date|1991|12|12}} |
|
{{Start date|1992|10}} |
- Technical notes
- Uses
to detect whether a day value was supplied. …zero-pads year/month/day to guarantee valid ISO format.provides locale-aware formatting for the visible text.- No hard-coded CSS; the skin controls styling of the generated
<time>tag.