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Kristina

Entering Old Style Dates

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I've just started using UK Gold Version 8 and would be grateful for any advice on how to successfully enter Old Style dates -- I've tried all the variants listed in the manual, but none of them work (they either produce a parallel to 'between' with a year gap recorded, or the error message of "irregular" date).

 

Thanks in advance for your help,

Kristina

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Kristina,

 

I suspect the issue is you are trying to enter an Old Style date for a time period outside the range set for them in Preferences. Check Preferences > Program Options > General, last item, and see if your date is within the range specified there.

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Hi Terry, Thanks for your advice. You're right -- I was experimenting over the weekend and discovered that a start date had been set for quite late in the 16th c. and I was working well before then. All resolved by changing it to 1066. Many thanks for the tutorials & articles link too; I'll make that my first port of call if I can't find an answer in TMG's PDF manual. Kind regards, Kristina

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You're welcome, Kristina.

 

It is set that way by default because the terms are generally used to describe the period over which the Gregorian calendar replaced the Julian calendar, which began in 1582. See, for example, the discussion in Wikipedia.

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For the record (and coming late to the party), according to http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03738a.htm#beginning

 

the double dating caused by the discrepancy of the year being from 25 March to 24 March vs. 1 January to 31 December was in effect from 1155 to 1752 in Great Britain (excepting Scotland, which changed it in 1600). I have been researching this all morning and apparently the Jan 1 New Year (which had been, for what it's worth, part of the official Julian calendar, though nearly every country seems to have chosen its own New Year's Day, some even crazy enough to choose Easter, a movable feast) was used commonly (possibly from Yule/winter solstice pre-Christian tradition) in the Middle Ages (12th or 14th century depending on the source). Confused enough yet?

 

Anyway, the Catholic Encyclopedia (link above) states in part that:

 

"In England before the Norman Conquest (1066) the year began either on 25 March or 25 December; from 1087 to 1155 on 1 January; and from 1155 till the reform of the calendar in 1752 on 25 March, so that 24 March was the last day of one year, and 25 March the first day of the next. But though the legal year was thus reckoned, it is clear that 1 January was commonly spoken of as New Year's Day."

 

Catholic Encyclopedia, General Chronology, sub-heading "Beginning of the Year." See newadvent dot org if the link doesn't work.

 

I consistently come across double dated January-March dates prior to 1583.

 

Because of the distinction between this usage regarding New Year versus the "lost days" of the Gregorian calendar reform (i.e., a discrepancy of 10 days in 1582 and 13 days now in the ecclesiastical calendars that still adhere to the Julian calendar), both of which are commonly referred to as both "Julian vs. Gregorian" and "Old Style vs. New Style," I would very much like to see TMG segregate these two functions. I appreciate that I can change the Preferences so that I can use a date like "22 Feb 1480/1" in any year I like, but I think it is imprecise and confusing to lump this in with the Julian/Gregorian/OS/NS 10-13 day discrepancy. I know that it's the common usage to lump them together (because the Gregorian edict did change both things), but they are two completely separate issues. Changing the date range for "Old Style Dates" in TMG's preferences makes me a little uncomfortable because to me the term "Old Style Date" implies the 10-13 day discrepancy.

 

Generally, if you see a source with a date "22 Feb 1680/1" that means that the New Year is moved, so that by modern reckoning it would be "22 Feb 1681" (which TMG calculates properly based on the date range set in Preferences), but you do NOT make a calculation to account for the date discrepancy of the Julian calendar. But if you see "22 Feb 1680/1 OS" in a source, that means that not only do you have the moved New Year (meaning that by modern reckoning it would be "22 Feb 1681") but you ALSO have to calculate the date discrepancy of the Julian calendar (so that the correct date by modern reckoning is actually "5 March 1681").

 

The promulgation of information about these calendar discrepancies means that the casual user trying to find a simple explanation will probably be further confused (even though the main Wikipedia article offers a fairly lucid explanation). Yet the information available with research to find date and calendar data for most countries, especially European ones (there are some nice tables at Wikipedia) means that it would be possible for TMG to take most of them into account. It might be prohibitively complicated, but perhaps some kind of date style similar to place styles with date ranges might be do-able? If it's too ambitious, fine, but at least please allow users to distinguish between New Year "Old Style" and Lost Days "Old Style" as a first step (with appropriate calculations for the latter as a second step later).

 

Hope this makes sense!

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In re-reading this I think that some of my assumptions in the next-to-last paragraph are in error.

 

As the Wikipedia article explains, using the date of Charles I's execution, which is commonly noted today as having taken place 30 Jan 1649, taking into account the moved New Year, but not the lost days. At the time it would have been written 30 Jan 1648/9. However, by modern reckoning (and the date in countries that had already at that time adopted the Gregorian reform) the date was 9 February 1649.

 

But we generally refer to the date of Charles I's execution as 30 Jan 1649, because it's considered common knowledge that any date in GB prior to 1752 is a Julian date.

 

The fact I've been researching this topic all day and am still having trouble wrapping my head around it shows how confusing it is and why I think it would be helpful if TMG would segregate the New Year from the Lost Days.

 

For purposes of calculating dates within TMG (e.g., age at death) it is perhaps only important when dealing with an individual whose life actually spans the implementation of the Gregorian reform where that person lived, as well as anytime after 1582 where there were interactions between people living in Julian calendar countries and Gregorian reform countries (e.g., Spain and England, or Catholic vs. Protestant German principalities). For example, I read that Thomas Jefferson directed that on his grave marker his birth date be given Old Style and his death date in New Style. (You can see photographs at his memorial on Find-A-Grave.) Or, in modern times, there is the 1917 Russian Revolution which took place in October (Old Style) and so is frequently referred to as the "October Revolution" although it took place in November in post-Gregorian-reform countries. And it is still an issue even today in Eastern Orthodoxy which has still not changed from the Julian calendar (and so celebrates Christmas in January-standard).

 

Hope this clarified my point of view a bit.

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The problem with Old Style Dates in TMG is that "OS" is not taken into account during the sort of dates, i.e. 1 Jan 1900 OS sorts the same as 1 Jan 1900 (but it should be 13 Jan 1900). So, Sundays are not Sundays any more etc.

 

I see this problem because my wife's grandmother (and the further ancestors) originates from Latvia and was born in 1895, the calendar changed after the October revolution in 1918.

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This query and answer is what I have always expected of TMG. This morning, in correcting a year, the program defaulted to the "from-to" instead of leaving the double date as 1651/52.

 

Anyone have any idea what has happened? Using v 8.04.

 

Pat

 

 

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Pat,

 

I assume the issue is that you have years only. Since the double-date only applies January through March 25, seems to me they can only be applied when you specify a date within those months. Outside of them the double date is not correct.

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I am confused, Pat. I entered exactly "1651/52" in a test event tag. TMG was quite happy with that, even as a date that consists of only years. Try as I might I could get not get TMG to view a pair of dates with a '/' between them as "from-to". I even tried entering "1651 to 52" but TMG warned me that it consider that text as an irregular date. Even if the years are outside the specified valid range for Old Style Dates, e.g. "1951/52", I get "Between 1951 and 1952", not "from-to".

 

Can you reproduce this behavior by entering exactly "1651/52" in another tag? Perhaps it is a bug in v 8.04, as there are things fixed in the latest v 8.08 release?

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