Our story up to now:
Both the University of Chicago Manual of Style and Strunk and White's Elements of Style state a preference for the 2 March form, but both also accept the March 2 form. Virtually every date in the Wikipedia is expressed in the March 2 form. (The mail headers for this message use the 2 March form.) Nothing that has come up in this mailing list discussion has not already been raised on the talk page (although the University of Chicago press position in favor of 2 March was greatly overstated here.)
In general, consistency in style is desirable, and most of the rules in the Manual of Style were based on what already was being done by the more careful (consistent, that is) contributors. Most dates are already in the March 2 style. It will add just that little bit of uncertainty if some are one way and some the other. There's nothing confusing about the March 2, 2003 style either.
Tom Parmenter Ortolan88
|From: M Carling m@idiom.com |Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2003 21:56:56 -0800 (PST) | | | |On Mon, 3 Mar 2003, The Cunctator wrote: | |> To the American ear, "2 March 2003" sounds like something Yoda would say. | |I won't speak for you -- only for myself. I'm an American and "2 March |2003" is fine by me. | |M Carling | |_______________________________________________ |WikiEN-l mailing list |WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org |http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l |