Template:Birth date and age/doc

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This template is used on approximately 653,000 pages, or roughly 7905% of all pages
To avoid major disruption and server load, any changes should be tested in the template's /sandbox or /testcases subpages, or in your own user subpage. The tested changes can be added to this page in a single edit. Consider discussing changes on the talk page before implementing them.

Usage

These templates ({{Birth date}} and {{Birth date and age}}) return a person’s date of birth and optionally his/her age. The latter also has the shortcut: {{Bda}}.

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}}

To display a birth date with calculated age

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

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|2|4|df=yes}} returns "4 February 1993"

{{Birth date|1993|2|4|mf=yes}} returns "February 4, 1993"

{{Birth date|1993|2|04|df=yes}} returns "4 February 1993"

{{Birth date|1993|2|04|mf=yes}} returns "February 4, 1993"

{{Birth date|1993|2|24|df=yes}} returns "24 February 1993"

{{Birth date|1993|2|24|mf=yes}} returns "February 24, 1993"

{{Birth date and age|1993|2|4|mf=yes}} returns February 4, 1993 (age 31)

{{Birth date and age|1993|2|4|df=yes}} returns 4 February 1993 (age 31)

{{Birth date and age|1993|2|04|mf=yes}} returns February 4, 1993 (age 31)

{{Birth date and age|1993|2|04|df=yes}} returns 4 February 1993 (age 31)

{{Birth date and age|1993|2|24|mf=yes}} returns February 24, 1993 (age 31)

{{Birth date and age|1993|2|24|df=yes}} returns 24 February 1993 (age 31)

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 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 | 2 | 24 | df=yes }} displays "24 February 1993".

{{Birth date and age | 1993 | 2 | 24 | df=yes }} displays "24 February 1993 (age 31)".

{{Birth date | 1993 | 2 | 24 | mf=yes }} displays "February 24, 1993".

{{Birth date and age | 1993 | 2 | 24 | mf=yes }} displays "February 24, 1993 (age 31)".

hCard microformat

The templates also return the date, hidden by CSS, in the ISO 8601 format 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.