Barbara Levergood commented on TMG's handling of "Old Style" dates. > I think that there is an error in TMG's handling of > Old Style dates, both in the program and in the help system... > Let's start with a very clear description of what > the notations mean in this context. > So, the date 24 Feb 1690/91 is in year 1690 OS and in year 1691 NS. > However, when you enter the following date in a TMG date field, > "recognizable" by TMG: 24 Feb 1690 OS TMG incorrectly converts that > to: 24 Feb 1689/90 [24 Feb 1690/91 is correct]. Hi Barbara, I think your concerns are based on your interpretation of the code "OS" as used by TMG during data input. TMG agrees with your definitions of "Old Style' and "New Style" for dates with a single year. *But* TMG HELP says in the topic "Date Format" under "Old Style Dates": "You should always enter Gregorian dates, therefore to enter an Old Style date: Enter the _new_style_ date followed by OS." In other words TMG clearly states that to get "24 Feb 1690/91", if you choose to only enter a date with one year then within TMG you enter the New Style date "24 Feb 1691" followed by TMG's special date code "OS". Since TMG will no longer ever be modified, hopefully it will help to recognize a few things about dates in this final TMG version: - TMG allows multiple formats for entering such a date, but converts all of those imputs to a single internal format. Further, TMG is completely consistent in the way it handles that conversion, whether the entry is a single year or double date format. A specific internal double date pair can always reliably be obtained. Because of the potential confusion caused by using the "OS" code in data entry, I always input such dates as double date years so there is no room for confusion. - TMG only outputs such dates using double date format, which ensures no confusion for the reader of a report. As stated in HELP, all single year dates are assumed to be New Style. - If the output is desired to be something other than TMG's standard double date output, that can be accomplished by entering the output desired as irregular text in the Date field. But a regular date should be entered in the Sort Date field for proper sorting. > Or when you enter 24 Feb 1691 OS TMG incorrectly converts that to: > 24 Feb 1690/91 [24 Feb 1691/92 is correct]. As noted above, TMG consistently interprets single year entries as New Style. However if you wish to output a date using an Old Style single year format, enter "24 Feb 1691 OS" in the Date field, *BUT* put a non-breaking space (Alt + 255 on the numeric keypad) between the year and 'OS'. TMG will now treat that date as irregular and output it as entered. Now be sure to enter a regular date using any of the recognized input formats such as "24 Feb 1691/92" or "24 Feb 1692 OS" in the Sort Date field so it will sort appropriately. For further details concerning entering Dates in TMG, see the "Dates" section of the "Data Entry" chapter in my on-line book: http://www.mjh-nm.net/DATENTRY.HTML#Dates Hope this helps, Michael