Forum:Dates and the "st" "nd" and "th"s

Index → Panopticon → Dates and the "st" "nd" and "th"s

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I've been wondering. I've changed a few of the numbers on pages to include the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4ths to look like this: 1^st 2^nd 3^rd 4^th. Now, should I continue to change these, or should I not bother. It looks better, and is generally how the dates are written, but I'm not sure if this will cause problems with necessary links and that. Perhaps if we didn't do it to those numbers that needed links, but those that don't link could be changed to that. Opinions? The Thirteenth Doctor 21:23, July 17, 2010 (UTC)

Actually, you can also make it look like that in page titles. See here for an example. What I did was I typed a random date into Word, pressed backspace and got onto the small upper bit and typed in the number I wanted. However, if you just type it into Word and copy and paste, it should work. ☆The Solar Dragon 21:43, July 17, 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely, positively, definitely do not bother, and please change back what you have done. The use of superscripts in this case is grammatically optional, and unless everyone is doing it, it will make it much harder to make changes using a bot. If you want to put it up for discussion, and then have a mass bot change following the successful closure of that debate, fine. But if you make a few changes here and there, it'll make it harder for the bot to make a single, mass change. Also, in no way should page titles be changed as The Solar Dragon suggests. There are fairly intricately programmed templates which are depending upon seeing date page titles written out without superscripts. Superscripts will break these templates. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 03:23, July 18, 2010 (UTC)

Oh goody. More work.

Umm...No.

Look at it this way, what's easier to type? Even if we made the change we'd still have oodles of redirects all pointing to the various days and centuries.

Just because we have the facilities to do a lot of minor changes doesn't mean we should. A bot isn't 100% affective, as CzechOut says various things can alter the behaviour of a bot.

Also I would caution against copying and pasting from Word, certain things like the apostrophe are rendered differently between Word and a basic text editing program, I learnt this problem early on (and now when writing away from browser use a basic text editing program), for example; Warriors' Gate and Sometime Never..., both written within the browser, now these two titles written in Word and copied in: Warriors’ Gate and Sometime Never…. They don't look different unless you look really closely at the apostrophe on the second Warriors' Gate, but if you look at the text of 'Sometimes Never…' the ellipsis is 1 character. --Tangerineduel 06:16, July 18, 2010 (UTC)