Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers

Would album/film releases classify as time-sensitive and regularly updated?

Per MOS:SINCE, would album and film releases yet to be released be covered by the aforementioned Manual of Style, and be allowed to use the terminology of upcoming. The example specifically calls out Category:Current events, and releases to be released do not necessarily meet that. livelikemusic (TALK!) 02:54, 16 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I see "upcoming" or similar phrasing all the time for commercial media works that have been confirmed to likely be released though may not have a firm time frame when they are expected. If the release timeframe is known, then the wording tends to be "is expected/scheduled/planned for release in/on (date)" as to avoid the SINCE issue. But as soon as a date is reported with a reasonable assurance of verifiability, any "upcoming" should be changed. Masem (t) 04:01, 16 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So, you would say, for example: Album Title is the upcoming album from Artist, to be released on date by record label. would be improper per the Manual of Style, then? livelikemusic (TALK!) 04:23, 16 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I sometimes see that in month-year, it was announced that album title would be released on date. It's a bit wordy and a little less emphatic than our usual practice for well-sourced statements, but it is durable. NebY (talk) 17:52, 16 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm speaking more in terms of the open to lead paragraphs. livelikemusic (TALK!) 18:26, 16 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"Upcoming" sure seems fine and unproblematic in such cases. No need to make things more complicated and wordy than they have to be. Gawaon (talk) 09:13, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
How wordy they have to be to remain encyclopedic is exactly the question here. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:01, 11 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

On comparable numbers near each other

Do counts of of different, but related things count as comparable numbers for these purposes? In particular, I'm thinking of when death and injury counts are given for disasters. Would these be comparable or these purposes? Or would that only apply if we were comparing, for instance, death tolls from different events/locations? For instance:

  • "The attack killed 3 people and injured 26."
  • "The attack killed three people and injured twenty-six."

Or would it be:

  • "The attack killed three people and injured 26."

I haven't really seen it done consistently either way. TornadoLGS (talk) 03:48, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Opinions will likely differ, and I suspect this is left to editor consensus per article. My personal preference is for the first of your 3 bullets, but I consider the second acceptable if that is preferred by others. The third looks awful, and unnecessarily hard for the reader to parse. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 09:42, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Deaths and injuries are usually comparable things, often added together as a single metric, 'Killed or seriously injured' (|KSI). In general I'd use one of your first two examples, but if the numbers were grossly dissimilar, it would be strange to impose consistency ("Only one person was killed but 2,173 were badly injured" is better than either alternative). It would then be more a matter of writing good English, rather than of Wikipedia's style choices, and I'd hope we wouldn't need WP:NUMNOTES to dive into differentiating between comparable things and comparable magnitudes. NebY (talk) 11:16, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I've even seen it applied differently within the same paragraph (actually edited from one I added): ... killing four people and injuring 88... But a few lines down: ... heavily damaging 30 government and residential buildings ... 5 of which were destroyed. TornadoLGS (talk) 17:57, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Three vs. 26 may still be a borderline case but i think with four vs. 88 it's very clear that we are NOT talking about "comparable numbers" anymore, hence writing them differently is very reasonable. You can compare anything if you really want to, but I would understand "comparable" in this context to mean fairly close to each other, which is not the case when they differ by an order of magnitude or more. Gawaon (talk) 02:42, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I think I had a misunderstanding in that "comparable" in this sense meant the things being counted were similar in nature. TornadoLGS (talk) 02:59, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My interpretation of "comparable" in Comparable values near one another should be all spelled out or all in figures, even if one of the numbers would normally be written differently: patients' ages were five, seven, and thirty-two or ages were 5, 7, and 32, but not ages were five, seven, and 32 is comparable in nature, not in value. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 18:47, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In that case there is some ambiguity that should be cleared up. TornadoLGS (talk) 18:49, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Do we need to? The examples you quoted yesterday are fine. Gawaon's right to point to one pair differing by an order of magnitude or more but what would be the significant benefit of determining and laying down a precise boundary? NebY (talk) 19:16, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think you are missing Tornado's point. Some of us are interpreting "comparable" as referring to the nature of the quantities, while others interpret the same word to refer to their value. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 20:43, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
TornadoGLS's initial examples are pairs that are comparable in both senses of quantity - that which is measured, and the amount of it. A later example was of strikingly dissimilar amounts, perhaps another one would be of strikingly dissimilar things. The word "comparable" serves us well in both cases. However, TornadoGLS's initial query was explicitly in terms of different, but related things. It's true that your initial responses didn't address that, but does that mean the MOS has an ambiguity that needs clearing up? NebY (talk) 20:50, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Dondervoge is right about the point I'm making. I gave an example that was comparable in nature and quantity. But this discussion raised a second matter: the sense of "comparable" is ambiguous as to how it should be if the values are comparable in nature but not in quantity, as in the example of four deaths and 88 injuries. TornadoLGS (talk) 21:11, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comparable absolutely means comparable in nature, not in magnitude. I've expanded the range of values in the "ages" example to help make that clear [1]. (I considered changing the example to "5 officers, 32 enlisted men, and 842 civilians" to make the range even wider but I was reminded (by a hidden note I placed in the wikitext twelve years ago!) that I had chosen to use ages as the example exactly because questions about how represent ages come up over and over.) EEng 01:40, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    That idea sounds neat in theory, but doesn't always work in practice. I recently came across this sentence in a book: "Only one in all these three groups was born before 1800, thirty-one were born in the first half of the nineteenth century, and 162 in the second half." Per our usual rules, we would more likely write the middle number as 31, but should we seriously suggest writing either 1 or one hundred sixty-two in this case? I for one certainly wouldn't, and I consider it best to accept that while nature matters, magnitude can't be totally neglected either. Gawaon (talk) 09:25, 14 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    I can see why they wrote out 'thirty-one', as it avoids confusion with the date immediately preceding it. To me that sample passage reads OK. Skeptic2 (talk) 10:33, 14 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Chapters?

I came here to ask about chapter numbers, but it seems similar to this discussion, so sticking it here. What's the right thing to do about chapter numbers in running text? In Carlisle & Finch, I recently wrote Chapter 1 described how to build track from steel rails ... which I think is fine, but it's not explicitly covered in the MOS (at least not that I can see). Book and volume numbers seem similar, although I see The Lord of the Rings uses Books III and IV which I think is also fine since that follows the original. This seems like something that needs clarifying in the MOS. RoySmith (talk) 15:59, 13 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

So, to be clear, are you asking about Roman vs Arabic numerals? TornadoLGS (talk) 17:19, 13 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, sorry, I'm asking about "Chapter 1" vs "Chapter One". RoySmith (talk) 17:27, 13 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Use numerals here: chapter 3 etc. The MOS suggests otherwise (I think), but it's nevertheless common practice. Gawaon (talk) 09:12, 14 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Albums

Should we use "11th" & "12th" in the intros of Abbey Road & Let It Be (album)? -- GoodDay (talk) 15:32, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't recommend changing away from the status quo. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 16:09, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You've twice[2][3] changed eleventh to 11th at Abbey Road and twice[4][5] changed twelfth to 12th at Let It Be (album). The MOS doesn't say you should. Why do you want to? NebY (talk) 16:09, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's what I'm asking. Which is correct? In world leader bios, we change to numerals after "tenth". GoodDay (talk) 16:16, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Why should the MOS stipulate that? Why did you think 11th and 12th better? NebY (talk) 16:23, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Possibly because we use "11th" in James K. Polk, "15th" in Pierre Trudeau, etc. GoodDay (talk) 16:26, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Both are correct, and you shouldn't switch between acceptable styles unless you've discussed it and gained consensus for the change. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 17:57, 22 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Game numbers

If you have a seven-game series in a sports matchup, and there is no consensus in the sources, would it be game one or game 1 when referring to that game? Conyo14 (talk) 09:33, 24 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If no other guidance supersedes and sources are inconsistent, then I think we default to MOS:NUMERAL and spell it out: game one. But as you have already implied, we defer to sources. Mathglot (talk) 21:48, 24 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Two points
  • Sources are (almost) irrelevant because we do not defer to sources on matters of presentation. The whole point of MOSNUM is to facilitate uniformity in such matters regardless of sources.
  • The outcome depends on context and there's not enough context here to provide a clear choice. My advice is to seek consensus on the article talk page. If that consensus is not forthcoming, consider reporting back here.
Dondervogel 2 (talk) 07:21, 25 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Disagree that "sources are irrelevant". If sources discussing, say, MLB World Series games invariably refer to the individual games as "Game 1", "Game 2", etc, insisting that Wikipedia write it out as "game one", "game two" etc because that is how we would typically write those numbers, is unreasonably dogmatic, and gains us nothing other than a reputation for being unrealistically dogmatic. (Or maybe extreme stylistic uniformity makes it easier for editors that run style bots to mass edit thousands of articles, I funny know? I don't agree that's a good reason, anyway). ~2025-42413-82 (talk) 07:47, 3 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, we also write stuff like season 3, episode 7, all the time when covering TV series. I think (not sure) that was meanwhile legalized by the MOS, but in any case it's widespread and (in practice) accepted. Gawaon (talk) 09:32, 3 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Likewise version 2, year 4, item 5 and paragraph 6. If we had to add something to MOS:NUMNOTES, I suppose we might talk of compounds that function as names, or some such. NebY (talk) 14:00, 3 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Echoing ~2025-42413-82. And we say Super Bowl XLVII because MOS:ROMANNUMERALS says... no, wait... oh yeah, because sources do. Mathglot (talk) 08:26, 3 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Or in MOS:NUMNOTES terms, because it's a proper name and we follow sources for those. NebY (talk) 14:05, 3 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Should SAT scores have a comma?

Many articles for schools list a composite SAT score in the text and / or in an infobox as a four-digit number, without a comma. Many newcomer edits I've seen have people adding a comma in an SAT score as in this edit, where "average SAT score for students is 1190" had a comma inserted to make it "1,190".

This style guide from Emory University says to "Use a comma in numbers of 1,000 and above, unless they appear in an address or SAT score", this one from Portland State University saying "SAT scores are an exception: Ripley’s SAT score was 1390." and this one from University of Colorado Boulder that says "Use a comma for numbers with more than three digits unless they represent SAT scores or years.... His combined SAT score was 1235."

Most persuasively, these sources are all from universities, which are all frequent consumers of SAT scores as part of their admissions practices.

Can I suggest that we build this into the Manual of Style for Dates and numbers, that four-digit SAT scores are an exception to the general rule and should NOT have a comma? Alansohn (talk) 19:54, 31 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The general rule per MOS:DIGITS is in fact already that commas are not required in four-digit numbers, though they are allowed. ("Numbers with exactly four digits left of the decimal point may optionally be grouped (either 1,250 or 1250), consistently within any given article.") Gawaon (talk) 04:17, 1 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Gawaon, yes, in general they are permitted. I am suggesting that a comma NOT be permitted in an SAT score. Alansohn (talk) 05:01, 1 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
We already do not permit a thousands separator for four-digit years and page numbers. In line with the style guides cited above, we should extend that rule to SAT scores. Joe vom Titan (talk) 09:11, 1 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Our beloved Manual of Style is already too long and we shouldn't make it any longer unless we must. I agree that years and SAT scores and lots of other things should be formatted without commas, but I don't think we need to make a rule about it. If somebody is going throuh the encyclopedia and adding commas to four digit numbers, they are not following our style and should be corrected, gently. Such discussions can take place on the article's talk page, or if it becomes a behavior problem on their user page. SchreiberBike | ⌨  13:30, 1 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
We will end up with endless content disputes on article talk pages about whether or not SAT scores should or should not have a comma, when these debates can be resolved with a trivial change and a reference to our beloved MOS that would put an end to the discussion. Alansohn (talk) 18:13, 1 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Are we having endless content disputes on article talk pages? The bad news is that editors who are inserting commas as a newcomer copy-editing task, as in the diff you provided, aren't likely to be checking WP:MOSNUM anyway; the good news is that they usually accept partial or complete reverts, especially if supported by even a minimal edit summary such as "no commas in SAT scores". NebY (talk) 20:03, 1 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
WP:MOSBLOAT is indeed my most successful essay. EEng 00:24, 2 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
The only addition I could possibly see as being worthwhile is something like "there are some usages of four digit numbers that are consistently formatted without commas. Commas should not be added to such instances, regardless of the presentation of numbers in general in an article." --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:47, 5 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Without further explanation as to which numbers are meant (at least by example), I think this could leave the reader confused rather than enlightened. Gawaon (talk) 03:37, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
True. I should have specified such. After more thought, I believe the difference is that SAT scores, years, addresses and such function more as labels. If you are counting, commas may be used with 4 digit numbers ("1,472 cars were stolen"). If you are labelling, commas should not be used with 4 digit numbers.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 12:26, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
But SAT scores are actually used for comparison and similar purposes? House #77 is not inherently better than house #65, but a higher score has a meaning. Gawaon (talk) 14:17, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
But the individual points that make up an SAT score aren't meaningful in the same way that the individual stolen cars I mentioned would be.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 12:29, 7 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Unlike years, addresses and such, SAT scores can be meaningfully averaged; more broadly, they're the results of calculations and used in calculations. There might not be a tidy universal rule for four-digit numbers. NebY (talk) 15:18, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
And in the other direction: US patents are just labels (though sequential, so there's some sense of time), yet they are usually presented with commas. So there is, indeed, no simple answer. EEng 15:57, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
US patent numbers are more than 4 digits, which is what this discussion is about. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 12:27, 7 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Well, not the first 9999 of them. But that's not my point, which is that the "labels" concept isn't dispositive. I need to bring the discussion back to the WP:MOSBLOAT test already mentioned: is significant editor time being wasted debating this, or undoing someone's mass-insertion of commas in SAT scores (or similar items)? EEng 18:55, 7 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

"Figures as figures"

Regarding MOS:NUMERAL, should sports numbers be written exclusively in numbers as opposed to words? E.g. Frank Lampard wore the shirt number 8, Dale Earnhardt raced with the number 3, Antoine Dupont is often regarded as the best number 9 in European rugby, etc. Take reliable sources on Cristiano Ronaldo, for example: The Guardian, Sky Sports, New York Times, The Independent, ESPN, The Daily Telegraph use "7"; BBC and Reuters use "seven". I feel any construction of the form "No. x" should also be covered if it is not elsewhere.

Figures as figures: Use a figure when the figure itself (its glyph, shape, etc.) is meant is the closest relation but feels unclear and would need clarification if that is its intention i.e. that statements specifically referring to the number itself should always be written as such. The examples suggest it is not and exclusively applies to the typography of numbers.

My suggestion is the remove the phrase in parentheses—which is made redundant by the opening two examples—and add two examples to the list present:

Figures as figures: Use a figure when the figure itself is meant: a figure-8 pattern; in the shape of the numeral 6; Cristiano Ronaldo wore the shirt number 7; she was ranked world No. 1. (See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Text formatting § Words as words.)

MB2437 07:18, 7 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The last example kinda doesn't follow, "No. 1" is just an ordinary ordinal here. Gawaon (talk) 11:47, 7 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I would argue that is an example of a figure itself being a noun, but it may be more suitable elsewhere. To my knowledge, it goes uncovered throughout the MOS despite being a very common construction. MB2437 16:38, 7 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, this is not about "figures as figures", but seems to be case of "cardinal used with ordinal meaning after a noun", which we also commonly use in expressions such as "season 2, episode 9". These are widespread, if not standard throughout Wikipedia, despite still technically violating the MOS, I think. At some point we should indeed fix the MOS accordingly. But "figures as figures" is not the right label for it. Gawaon (talk) 02:49, 8 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]
allikas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_%28dates_and_numbers%29