Template:Lifetime/doc

Usage
  is for automatically generating all category tags related to birth and death years, including living people and missing or unknown values. The general DEFAULTSORT can be embedded as well.



will replace:



Other cases are handled with options, see below. As with the original, the embedded magic word DEFAULTSORT also applies to all categories on the page, nomatter whether the lifetime template is before or after them.

This template supports optional substitution. If you want to substitute it, use the following syntax:



Since Categories are preferred to be listed in most-common order, the template should generally be placed after the last Category tag, for example:



Options
For each option, the default value is displayed in bold and automatically assumed if the field is left blank.

Please note that MISSING results in Categories that are not displayed on the page.


 * 1 (birth)
 * MISSING : when year seems possible to be found.
 * Category:Year of birth missing or Category:Year of birth missing (living people)
 * year of birth : such as "1899" or known approximations such as "1890s" or "19th-century" (note the hyphen).
 * Category:1899 births or Category:1890s births or Category:19th-century births


 * 2 (death)
 * LIVING : living or assumed living people.
 * Category:Living people
 * MISSING : believed dead and year seems possible to be found.
 * Category:Year of death missing
 * year of death : such as "1986" or known approximations such as "1980s" or "20th-century" (note the hyphen).
 * Category:1986 deaths or Category:1980s deaths or Category:20th-century deaths


 * 3 (sortkey)
 *   : should usually never be left blank (especially with Asian names, it is hard to make the difference between a missing sortkey and a sortkey identical to the article name due to a family-first name).
 * Asian name, Honorific prefix (qualifier suffix) : for assertion of sortkey assessment.
 * "Mao, Zedong" - "Kim, Il-sung" - "Matsuo Bashō|Matsuo, Basho" - "Nu, U" - "Wang, Li (politician)"
 * Family name, Given name, Honorific-prefix (qualifier suffix) : for proper sorting.
 * "Newton, Isaac, Sir" - "Karlsson, Ove (sports journalist)"
 * For further details, see Categorization of people.

Most values are case-insensitive ("LIVING" or "LiVinG" work the same), except when it matters (such as century names).

Examples

 * For a living person

or

will replace:


 * For a missing birth and living person

or

will replace:


 * For a dead person

will replace:


 * Etc.

Technical
Before changing the template's code or text, please bear in mind some points that should be preserved:


 * The template's name and its aliases are in all-caps and feature the suffix -SORT so as to clue in editors that it embeds and replaces DEFAULTSORT. (The original alias "BD" was renamed and is unlisted for the same reason.)
 * The seemingingly useless extra bars in the switch statements are for empty values.
 * Extra whitespace around years doesn't matter, because page titles (category names in this case) are not sensitive to extra spaces. Calls such as will produce the wikitext [&#91;Category: &#32; &#32; 1899 &#32; &#32; births&#93;], but the extra spaces do not change the effect of the link, see Category: &.
 * Please, do not edit war by replacing DEFAULTSORT, xxxx births, yyyy deaths with this template, or the opposite.

The template provides a local sandbox and testcases for developing and testing changes (see documentation's hatnote).