The date precision of different kinds of documents may vary. An email has a time as well as a date. A letter by convention has only a date - not a time - because with traditional post a same-day reply is not expected to be possible. Most documents have a date precision no less than a day but there are some document which have a precision of more than a day.
A map typically only has a year because it is the result of surveys carried out over many months so when published the map is simply given a year only.
A plan of a particular site produced by a land surveyor may take several days of measurement on site and then further work on a computer back at the office so typically such surveys are produced labelled with a month and year. Similarly usually architects' drawings are labelled with month and year.
Google StreetView images are also (for privacy reasons) only given a month and year.
A Google Earth satellite image may be, if it covers a large area, a mozaic made up of pictures taken on different days, so that although a year (and perhaps in some cases a year and month) can be given, the image as a whole does not have a day-of-month.
In these cases it is not so much that the date is uncertain - the year or year and month are known - it is simply that the precision is low, being more than a single day.
On the other hand, some documents must actually have been created on a precise single date, but it is simply not known when that date was, perhaps, in some cases, not even approximately. A non-digital photo taken decades ago must have been taken on some specific year, month and day-of-month but the only indication of date might be, for example, the presence in the photo of, of the lack of, a permanent structure whose year of construction and/or year of removal are known.
When assigning a date to a document (e.g. in a filename or in a document management system) the objective is to assign an exact date down to an exact day-of-month, if that is known, and otherwise to assign an inexact date making clear that it is an inexact date and avoiding giving an inappropriate impression of degree of accuracy or precision.
At the final tribunal hearing of a dispute subject to litigation, various pieces of evidence will be considered by the tribunal which may have a bearing on exactly when a particular crucial document was produced, if that is a matter of importance and is disputed, but, at earlier preparatory stages, the objective is to assign either exact dates where they are reasonably certain (e.g. a letter will have the date printed at the top which, in the absence of any indication of mistake or fabrication, is taken to be the exact date), or else inexact dates where those can be ascertained in a fairly straightforward way. For example a photo may show a child whose birth year is known and whose age can be estimated from the photo so the photo can be given an approximate year. As a result of the litigation process other evidence may point by inference to a more exact date, but that other evidence may not yet have been produced, and/or might be disputed, so initially the document is assigned an approximate date or date range ascertained in a fairly straightforward way without resorting to any complex inferences.
How to name documents depends on whether you are simply using the filename of a document inside an ordinary computer folder or whether you are using a document management system which requires an exact date in its date field.
If the document (such as a map) has a year but no month, you can enter the year at the start of the filename:
1998 OS Map (or R-25 OS Map 1998 if the filename starts with a disclosure number)
If you are using a document management system which requires an exact date to be entered, you can enter the year as part of the document name preceded by a tilde (~) symbol, to ensure that, even if the document management system you are using requires an exact date in its date field, nobody is misled about the precision of the date.
Document date field Displayed Date Date as shown in document downloads Document Name field
01-01-1998 1998 01-01-1998 ~ 1998 OS Map (or R-25 OS Map 1998 ~)
In this case although it is the tilde which indicates low precision, it is good practice to also use 01 as the day-of-month (and 01 as the month number) in the date field to make it stand out.
If the year and month are known, but the exact day of the month is not, you can enter the year and month at the start of the filename:
2005-02 Google Street View image (or R-26 Google Street View image 02-2005 if the filename starts with a disclosure number)
If you are using a document management system which requires an exact date, you can enter the year and month number as part of the document name followed by a tilde (~) symbol, to ensure that, even if the document management system you are using requires an exact date in its date field, nobody is misled about the precision of the date.
Document date field Displayed Date Date shown in downloads Document Name field
01-02-2005 02/2005 01-02-2005 ~ 2005-02 Google Street View image (or R-26 Google Street View 02-2005 ~)
If only the decade is known, you can enter the year with the last digit replaced with an X:
199X Photo of wall (or R-27 Photo of wall 199X if the filename starts with a disclosure number)
If you are using a document management system which requires an exact date, you can enter the partial year as part of the document name followed by a tilde (~) symbol, to ensure that, even if the document management system you are using requires an exact date in its date field, nobody is misled about the precision of the date.
Document date field Displayed Date Document Name field
01-01-1990 Undated ~ 199X Photo of wall (or R-27 Photo of wall 199X ~)
In a case where not even the decade is known, just put whatever is known about the date, like this
1980s or 1990s Photo of garden (or R28 Photo of garden 1980s or 1990s if the filename starts with a disclosure number)
and don't use the date field if you are using a document management system. Don't use the form about 20 years ago because if you do someone reading that will not know exactly when you entered it and therefore be unclear what year to count back 20 years from.
If you have no knowledge at all of the date of the document, not even the likely decade, use date nk
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