Manual of Style:Dates and numbers

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This page documents the Manual of Style guidelines of the GTA Wiki.

In short: use American date format month-day-year where possible, and ensure numbers are grouped per three digits (1,000,000).

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MOS:DATE

MOS:NUM

MOS:NUMBERS

This page documents the Official GTA Wiki Manual of Style on dates and numbers.

Formatting

Dates, months and years

As both British English and American English are generally accepted (see MOS:SPELLING), both month-day-year and day-month-year formats are accepted. month-day-year is generally considered American English format, while day-month-year is considered British English format.

To avoid confusion, only month-day-year (or mm-dd-yyyy) is accepted for concise date formats (01/31/2001).

Format	Format (abbreviated)	Usage notes
Acceptable formats
1 January 1970	1 Jan 1970	A comma does not follow the month unless the year has context (i.e. significance).
January 1, 1970	Jan 1, 1970	A comma follows the day to improve readability.
January 1 1 January	1 Jan Jan 1	The year can be omitted if there is no risk of ambiguity.
	01/31/2005	Only use `mm-dd-yyyy` format for concise date formats. Only use concise date format if space is limited (in tables, infoboxes, tab names, etc).
Unacceptable formats
1 january january 1	1 jan jan 1	Dates should be capitalized.
01 January January 01	01 Jan Jan 01	Do not use zero-pad numbers (01, 02, 03, etc).
1st January January 1st	1st Jan Jan 1st	Do not use ordinals (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc).
01/31/02		Do not use concise year formats (02 for 2002, 97 for 1997, etc).
Two thousand and one First of January January the first		Do not write dates in words.
in the year 2001		Do not include "the year" unless it is needed for clarity.
MMII		Do not use roman numerals.
31-10-2002 10-31-2002 2002-10-31 2002-31-10 31102002 10312002 20021031 20023110		Do not use these formats.

Using the time function

The {{#time}} parser function can be used to condense space when a longer date format is preferred. This can be seen best used in Event tables for GTA Online DLCs. The visual format of the date is decided by the first half of the function (decided through the use of certain uppercase and lowercase letters), while the actual date being written is decided by the second half. In this context, the concise date format (mm-dd-yyyy) may be used in the function itself, as the purpose is to extend compacted dates into proper formats.

In the example of {{#time:F j, Y|2024-06-01}}, the first half (F j, Y) decides that the format should be the full month name, the non zero-padded day of the month followed by a comma, and the full four-digit year. The second half (2024-06-01) is the desired date. After being written, the function should visually display as June 1, 2024.

Letter	Description	Output for current date
Acceptable formats
Day of the month
j	Day of the month, not zero-padded.	28
Month of the year
F	The full month name.	September
M	A three-letter abbreviation of the month name.	Sep
Year
Y	Full 4-digit year.	2024
Unacceptable formats
Day of the month
d	Day of the month, zero-padded. ONLY use if using the concise date format in limited space (in tables, infoboxes, tab names, etc).	28
Month of the year
n	Month number, not zero-padded.	9
n	Month number, zero-padded. ONLY use if using the concise date format in limited space (in tables, infoboxes, tab names, etc).	09
Year
y	Abbreviated 2-digit year.	24

Numbers

Numerals vs words

In article text:

Integers from zero to nine (0 to 9) are spelled in words (one, two, three, etc).
Integers greater than 10 are expressed in numerals (19, 1000, 1,234,567, etc).
Integers greater than 1000 which are expressible in one or two words can be spelled out in words (one million or 1 million, two thousand or 2 thousand).

In tables and infoboxes:

All integers are expressed in numerals (1000, 4-door sedan, 10-storey garage, etc).

Notable exceptions:

Only numerals are used for units of time or measurement (12 miles, 22 minutes, 6 foot, etc).
Only numerals are used for non-integer values, such as negative values, decimal values and fractions (-2, 3.14, 1/12).

Fractions

Fractions can be written in the format "numerator/denominator" (1/2, 3/4, 5/12, etc). This is because wiki markup only intrinsically supports a small selection of precomposed fractions (½, ⅓, ⅞, etc).

Decimals

In article text, decimals should generally be rounded to a maximum of three decimal places (thousandths). The number of decimal places used anywhere else depends on the context of the value itself.

Use a period (.) as the decimal separator (3.14, not 3,14).
Use a leading zero (0.02, not .02).

Grouping of digits

Larger numbers may require digits to be grouped to improve readability (for example, 1,562,671).

Use a comma (,) to group digits.
Numbers with four or more digits (1,000) are grouped into threes (1,234 or -120,000).
Decimal numbers are never grouped (0.000002 or -1.00007).
Calendar years greater than five digits are grouped into threes (10,200 AD).

Units of measurement

Units of measurement should be expressed in a primary unit, with an optional secondary unit in parentheses (for example, 340m (1115.5 feet) ).

The primary unit for all articles should be the metric scale (grams, meters, liters, degrees Celsius, etc), with the optional secondary unit being the imperial scale. A notable exception to this is the height of people and characters, where the primary unit is the imperial scale (i.e., feet and inches) and a required secondary unit being the metric scale.

The choice of factor for a specific unit of measurement depends on the page and is usually defined in the specific article layout. Generic factors include:

Feet and inches for height of people (including characters and real people).
Meters (m) for shorter distances and height (such as short roads or height of buildings and structures).
Meters squared (m2 or m²) for small areas (such as building footprints).
Kilometers for longer distances (such as highways or travel distances).
Liters (l) for volumes of liquid (such as fuel tank capacity).
Kilograms for weight (such as specified weights of characters, vehicles, props, etc)

The expression of the units themselves depends on the context of their use:

Units of measurement in article text should not be abbreviated (100 kilometers, 50 kilograms, etc).
Units of measurement in non-body text, such as tables and infoboxes, should be abbreviated (6'2", 1.88m, 450kg, etc).
Feet and inches must use apostrophes (') and quotation marks ("), respectively (see MOS:PUNCTUATION).

Units of currency

Units of currency should be expressed in a primary unit, with optional secondary and tertiary units in parentheses (for example, $39.99 (£31.11 or A$60.99) ).

The primary unit for all articles should be the United States dollar ($). An optional secondary unit may sometimes be applicable where different currencies are used in overseas retail versions of game titles.

All in-game content should be referred to in US dollars using the dollar sign ($).

It may sometimes be necessary to distinguish between the in-game currency and real-world currency (for example, where content may be easily confused as in-game currency, such as the Criminal Enterprise Starter Pack or GTA+). This is only necessary with the primary unit (dollars). In such cases, "GTA$" can be used to denote in-game currency.

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