Talk:DDMMYY

RFD discussion: March–November 2019

The following information passed a request for deletion (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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DDMMYY

This and DDMMYYYY don't seem like lexical units. --Pious Eterino (talk) 10:41, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Yes, the existence of these entries is appalling and amateurish, but see Talk:yy: we are a minority in realising this. Equinox ◑ 03:47, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• Delete. — SGconlaw (talk) 04:41, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Probable keep. Could well be useful to someone. SemperBlotto (talk) 15:29, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Delete. Per utramque cavernam 15:33, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• Move and redirect to DMY, which is sometimes used to differentiate from MDY dating systems. bd2412 T 17:32, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Delete; not words. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:48, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

That's not a valid reason. The CFI for this project extends far beyond words. Purplebackpack89 05:18, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

But it doesn't extend to formulas. This is a sequence of variables, no different from a² + b² = c², which most people who have studied geometry will recognize as the Pythagorean Theorem, or f=ma, equally recognizable to anyone who has studied physics. There are conventions as to which letters are used and what they represent, but they're not lexical. Chuck Entz (talk) 06:11, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Yay, a slippery slope argument! FWIW, we ought to have entries for those two formulas. Purplebackpack89 12:44, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Huh, why? Canonicalization (talk) 22:33, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Delete. - TheDaveRoss 22:53, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Keep. In Taxation's Year Book and Digest, I find the following use: "Date of deposit (DDMMYY)". Surely, DDMMYY is a space-free and hyphen-free sequence of letters that means something. The argument about the item not being "lexical unit" is bogus, from what I can tell; why is NM (nautical mile) a lexical unit, and why is it not a sum of parts? Or why is nm (nanometer) not a sum of parts, given the predictable use of n- for nano-, m- for milli-, etc.? The argument would have to be that DDMMYY is a sum of parts, but that's problematic for space-free and hyphen-free items. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:50, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Dan, it's not bogus at all, and it's not about predictability: nm (nanometer) is an abbreviation, whereas this is more like a "template": we could write yyyyyyyy if we wanted to ask for eight-digit years from the far future. It doesn't stand for "year year year year year year year year" but rather y stands for year and is being repeated. Equinox ◑ 02:34, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

equinox, i have heard this spoken in person occasionally (pronounced "dee dee emm emm why why") in the context of arguing about what the best date formats are. "yyyyyyyy" isn't comparable because it's not in the lexicon, it wouldn't come up in these conversations other than perhaps as a joke (and even then the number of "y"s could vary to have the same effect). yes it is a template, but it also refers to a specific common date format (often compared with YYYYMMDD or YYYY-MM-DD), while "yyyyyyyy" does not. ---02:42, 21 July 2019 (UTC) — This unsigned comment was added by Habst (talk • contribs).

I don't see why pronunciation is relevant. I don't think templates are includable even if they are common. Equinox ◑ 02:48, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

yes, see my comment below, i agree with you about templates but this has a meaning beyond just the literal computer-interpretation of the letters. --Habst (talk) 02:52, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

• Keep I don't know what the nominator is calling "lexical" but if I see "Use DDMMYY" or "Use DDMMYYYY" in the instructions of filling out a form, it is clear to me what the form is expecting. That's what I'd call lexical. Purplebackpack89 19:29, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

“But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument',” Alice objected.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” Equinox ◑ 19:34, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

equinox, we can compare it to words like 4-8-4+4-8-4 that we already have on wiktionary. note that just because we have one entry in Whyte notation doesn't mean that any random Whyte notation term (as i understand it, there are infinite possible such terms) would be page-worthy -- only the most notable and well-used ones, and DDMMYY definitely qualifies under that criteria. --Habst (talk) 06:46, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

@Equinox Your Lewis Carroll reference is not only gratuitous, but inaccurate. If Humpty Dumpty is the designer of forms that have "Use DDMMYYYY", that would make me (and the other people who fill out said forms) Alice, and, unlike in your Lewis Carroll quote, we are able to understand the term "Use DDMMYYYY" because it has meaning, and therefore should be in the dictionary. Purplebackpack89 05:18, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

No, he was obviously referring to your saying "That's what I'd call lexical", because you were using your very own meaning of "lexical". Chuck Entz (talk) 06:11, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

My definition of lexical isn't much, if any, of a deviation from standard usage. Consider definition #6 of lexicon. Purplebackpack89 12:44, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Delete BTW, and revisit Talk:yy. Equinox ◑ 02:32, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Keep typically it's compared with YYYYMMDD in debates about date formats for application developers, with people who tend to think in a "user-facing" way choosing the former (because it's closer to how we as humans interpret and speak dates) while people who think more logically / back-end developers choosing the latter (because it's sortable and leaves fewer questions about month/day or day/month order). it's not meant to be interpreted literally as a sum of the letters or a "code" -- it's meant to represent one of those two positions, as i've heard it. there are plenty of online arguments about date formats that use this code as a representation of a position, rather than the literal sum-of-letters meaning. --Habst (talk) 02:47, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

i'd say it's similar to the w:Vim vs emacs debate. not quite as notable, but notable enough where i've seen this same debate happen more than a few times in person and on technical forums. --Habst (talk) 02:50, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Programmers also argue about how braces should be indented. So what? Programmer arguments are not relevant to inclusion in a dictionary of words. Equinox ◑ 02:49, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Delete. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 00:33, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Keep. It is useful to find, in a dictionary, a definition of an abbreviation such as "DDMMYY" or "ASAP" or "stat". Nihil novi (talk) 05:54, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

As has been argued, DDMMYY is not like ASAP or stat. Equinox ◑ 01:00, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

No consensus to delete after more than half a year of discussion. bd2412 T 06:06, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

RFV discussion: December 2019

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for verification (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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DDMMYY

Classified as an initialism – initialism of what? Not only is this POS header explicitly disallowed, it also is wrong. The non-gloss definition says: Used on forms to indicate that the date should be written as two-digit days, months, and years, e.g. 02/04/11 for 2 April 2011. But in the uses I see, this would be incorrect; instead the date 2 April 2011 should be entered in the form 020411, a sequence of six contiguous digits without separating slashes. To verify this sense, we need uses where DDMMYY denotes the 8-glyph format of 02/04/11.  --Lambiam 22:53, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Why? This is a format string, not a word. Kiwima (talk) 23:24, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Why what? I question the sense provided. Can it be verified? BTW, neither Format string nor Word is included in the list of allowed POS headers. Perhaps Symbol? (Visible traces or impressions, made using a writing device or tool, that are connected together and/or are slightly separated.)  --Lambiam 00:00, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Right. If we have cites of usage, then we might get past our own prejudices and determine, based on facts, whether this string of characters is used as a word. That it may not exist in speech wouldn't mean that it is not a word, nor would its being a format string mean that it is not also a word. DCDuring (talk) 02:57, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

I have added 5 cites of DDMMYY used in running text, apparently as a noun, sometimes used attributively. I have added a noun PoS section and definition.

The challenged definition does not characterize usage in running text, though it is abundantly citable in various manuals that Google has scanned, some of which have print forms or data-entry screens as figures. (See this Google Books listing.) I don't know what PoS such a thing would have. DCDuring (talk) 03:28, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

The 2010 quotation strongly suggests that the definition is incorrect.  --Lambiam 14:21, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

@Lambian In what way? In any event, a definition doesn't need to cover all usage outliers. DCDuring (talk) 16:47, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

The 2010 cite contrasts the format DDMMYY with the format DD/MM/YY; obviously, they mean different things. What else could 2 April 2011 in the format DD/MM/YY be than the 8-glyph sequence 02/04/11? Since (in the cited text) the formatted dates for the two formats are different, this then cannot be 2 April 2011 in the format DDMMYY. This contradicts the non-gloss definition.  --Lambiam 22:02, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

The 2010 definition doesn't belong with the others: it's truly a formatting string, while the others are shorthand for "day-month-year". Chuck Entz (talk) 14:40, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

I don't see what is different about the 2010 cite. DCDuring (talk) 14:49, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Too early, not enough time to read everything properly... Chuck Entz (talk) 14:58, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

I think Lambiam's point is that the 2010 cite distinguishes DDMMYY from DD/MM/YY, and so contradicts the first "initialism" definition (but not the noun definition). Kiwima (talk) 22:25, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Precisely – that is the sense for which I requested verification. As to classification as a noun, note that SVO and its ilk – which I think are grammatically very similar to DDMMYY and suchlike – have been classified as adjectives. While we find uses that suggest a noun (such as “the word order changed from SVO to SOV”), this equally fits the pattern of “things went from bad to worse”.  --Lambiam 09:02, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

I doubt that SVO meets our adjective criteria. DCDuring (talk) 14:41, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

RFV-resolved Definition altered so as not to include the separator. Kiwima (talk) 21:40, 17 December 2019 (UTC)