Wikipedia:Recent years

This is the central guideline for recent year articles. Recent year articles (e.g. 2024, 2023) are among the most heavily edited on Wikipedia. Such events may be better placed on a subpage. That an event is important to an individual editor, or even to a particular society or nation, is not sufficient ground for its inclusion. The event must have a demonstrated, international significance. Also, the fact that other year articles may include events which break this set of guidelines is not a valid reason to do so for another event.

Consensus

Any of the standards set below can be overruled by a consensus to ignore those standards in a given case.

Lead section

The lead section of a year article should be about two paragraphs in length.

First Paragraph

The first paragraph of a year article should be one to two sentences long, and should include the following information:

1. The name of the year, in boldface Arabic numerals (e.g. 2010)
2. The name of the year, in boldface Roman numerals. It's optional to have these numerals linked to the Roman numerals article (e.g., MMX).
3. The day on which the year began or will begin, written as "common year starting on [day]". The word "common" through the name of the day should constitute one or two links (e.g. common year starting on Friday, common year starting on Friday)
4. If applicable, the fact that the year is ongoing (may be in either #3 before the day on which the year began or #4).
5. The calendar era (optional) and calendar in which the year occurs (e.g. the Anno Domini or Common Era, the Gregorian calendar.
6. (Optional) The year's ordinal position in its:
   1. Calendar era (e.g. AD/CE)
   2. Millennium (e.g. the 3rd millennium)*
   3. Century (e.g. the 21st century)*
   4. Decade, required only if the year the is first or last year of a specific decade (e.g. the 2010s), otherwise it's optional. Please note that in the Gregorian calendar, there was no year zero. The first year of a AD/CE century or millennium begins with "1". However, the first year of a decade ends with a "0" (e.g. 2010 is the first year of the 2010s decade).

Note: Millennium and century required if a particular year is the first or last year of a century and millennium.

The article for 2012 may begin as follows:

2012 (MMXII) is a leap year starting on Sunday in the Gregorian calendar and is the current year. It is the 2012th year in the Common Era (or Anno Domini) and the 12th year in the 3rd millennium and 21st century.