Wikinews:Water cooler/proposals/archives/2023/November

WN:TIME

The style guide's time section explicitly says to use the a.m./p.m. format when writing 12-hour times. Yet, it is now standard convention here to use the AM/PM format. I was, in fact, corrected for using the a.m./p.m. format as I had read in WN:TIME. I figure this was something that we strayed from policy on in recent years. So, should WN:TIME be amended to reflect the current conventions? Heavy Water (talk) 14:42, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Comments

This conversation has been marked for the community's attention. Please remove the {{flag}} when the discussion is complete or no longer important.

Flagging as it's been a month with no comments or votes. Heavy Water (talk) 21:34, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

Votes

• Support --JJLiu112 (talk) 19:32, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
• Support —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:37, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
• Support — Michael.C.Wright (^Talk/_Published) 14:38, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
• Support —chaetodipus (talk · contribs) 07:05, 20 August 2023 (UTC)
• Support Pecopteris (talk) 23:14, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose: On consideration, personally I would prefer we maintain the a.m./p.m. format — I proposed this not because I personally supported it, but to seek consensus on whether the guideline enumerated in WN:TIME should remain, as it has appeared to me current convention is against that guideline. WN:TIME, since January 2005 (apparently its entire existence), has required a.m./p.m. Maintaining that would keep articles in the deep archives where users did follow the style guide in compliance with it. Heavy Water (talk) 19:11, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
• Comment I could be wrong, but I think "a.m./p.m." is likely used in that variant of English (like US, CAN) which uses periods to separate letters in an abbreviation. (Even though "a.m."/"p.m." are themselves are acronyms.) I have never liked "a.m./p.m." and always liked "AM/PM", for my article will not have unnecessary periods, and every time Pi zero would review my articles, I never liked when "AM/PM" was moved to "a.m./p.m." as it went against the style of the whole article. So, I would say, keep both, so the flow of the article looks consistent. (I'm not logged in yet, but even if I was, I don't know if I should put support/oppose.)
  2401:4900:1F29:679A:5DF8:3314:62E:A4D0 (talk) 05:04, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
• Question Is there a reason why it wouldn't work if both styles are allowed, so long as the article is self-consistent? I know that several other wikis tend to be somewhat permissive when it comes to the choices made for an individual article, so long as the article's application of the style choices are consistent. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 05:23, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

  I can't see why that wouldn't work (as Ac said); it's the treatment given to certain other style choices — notably, national variety of English. (I personally use AM/PM outside en.wn.) Heavy Water (talk) 06:07, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

  I just think of how I would expect most news outlets to work and they would have a single in-house style. You wouldn't expect to see The New York Times have varying ways of writing times across different articles wily-nily. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:38, 28 November 2023 (UTC)