Template:Birth date and age/doc

This is a documentation subpage for Template:Birth date and age. It contains usage information, categories and other content that is not part of the original page.

These templates ({{Birth date}} and {{Birth date and age}}) return a person’s date of birth and optionally his/her age. These have the shortcuts {{dob}} and {{bda}} respectively.

Do NOT use this template when the person’s exact date of birth is disputed or unknown.

Using this template rather than simply inserting the date into articles allows for the inclusion of hidden metadata about the date. This metadata can be used by web browsers and other software tools to extract the details, and display them using some other website or mapping tool, index or search them.

Syntax

To display the birth date only

{{Birth date|year of birth|month of birth|day of birth|additional parameters}} Do not use with non-Gregorian dates because the resulting hCard hidden date will be false.

{{dob}} is a redirect to {{Birth date}}

{{dob|year of birth|month of birth|day of birth|additional parameters}}

To display a birth date with calculated age

{{Birth date and age|year of birth|month of birth|day of birth|additional parameters}}

This form is only intended for living persons. In the rare case that a living person's birth date is given in a non-Gregorian calendar this template should not be used. The parameter names 'year', 'month', and 'day' can be used instead of the first, second, and third parameters for 'Birth date and age' only. These parameter names are not available for the 'Birth date' template.

{{Bda}} is a redirect to {{Birth date and age}}

{{Bda|year of birth|month of birth|day of birth|additional parameters}}

Examples:

{{Birth date|1993|02|04|df=yes}} returns "(1993-02-04)4 February 1993"

{{Birth date|1993|02|04|mf=yes}} returns "(1993-02-04)February 4, 1993"

{{Birth date|1993|02|24|df=yes}} returns "(1993-02-24)24 February 1993"

{{Birth date|1993|02|24|mf=yes}} returns "(1993-02-24)February 24, 1993"

{{Birth date and age|1993|02|04|mf=yes}} returns (1993-02-04) February 4, 1993

{{Birth date and age|1993|02|04|df=yes}} returns (1993-02-04) 4 February 1993

{{Birth date and age|1993|02|24|mf=yes}} returns (1993-02-24) February 24, 1993

{{Birth date and age|1993|02|24|df=yes}} returns (1993-02-24) 24 February 1993

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. This default may not be appropriate for articles about people from parts of the world where the day precedes the month in a date. 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:

{{Birth date|1993|02|24|df=yes}} displays "(1993-02-24)24 February 1993".

{{Birth date and age|1993|02|24|df=yes}} displays " (1993-02-24) 24 February 1993".

{{Birth date|1993|02|24|mf=yes}} displays "(1993-02-24)February 24, 1993".

{{Birth date and age|1993|02|24|mf=yes}} displays " (1993-02-24) February 24, 1993".

hCard microformat

The templates also returns the date, hidden by CSS, in the ISO 8601 format (but not necessarily to the ISO 8601 standard) needed by hCard microformats. for example:

(<span class="bday">1993-02-24</span>)

Note: for the "foundation", "built" and similar set-up dates of companies, buildings, etc., use {{Start date}} (this will work for year-only or month-year dates).

See the microformats project for details.

Notes

When only the year of a person's birth and/or death are known, or if it is desired not to state a person's full dates of birth and death for privacy reasons, use the templates {{Birth year and age}} and {{Death year and age}} instead.

Note: The template will appear broken when the parameters are left blank (as seen above).

Note: Do not use this template inside of the Persondata template, as it can interfere with data extraction.

See also

• Wikipedia:Age calculation templates
• {{BirthDeathAge}} – carries out the functions of this template and all the following ones
• {{Birth date and age}} – same as {{Birth date}}, except that "(age ##)" appears after the birth date
• {{Birth date and age2}} – Displays an individual's birth date, plus his or her age as of a specified date. In this template, "(aged ##)" appears after the birth date.
• {{Birth year and age}} – year of birth and approximate age
• {{Birth based on age as of date}} – used when a dated reference mentions the age of a person as of the date of publication
• {{Death date and age}} – same as {{Death date}}, except that "(aged ##)" appears after the death date
• {{Death year and age}} – year of death and approximate age at death
• {{Death date}} – displays the date and related hidden metadata
• {{Age}} – returns the number of full years between two specified dates
• {{Age in years and days}} – returns full years and days between two dates