THE YEAR-WEEK-DAY SYSTEM
The dating and updating of TRINPsite documents is done on the basis of a
novel Year-Week-Day system, which is actually a
'Year-Week-Fixed Week Day' system.
In this timekeeping system each day is represented by the following type
of code consisting of three numbers: 12.34.5.
Such a Y.W.D. code is shorter than those used in
the traditional day-month-year and month-day-year systems, which
need 4 instead of 3 digits to record the day of a given year.
While it is neither shorter nor longer than an alternative
year-day system in which the days would be numbered from 1
to 366, it has, as will become clear, the great advantage of directly
relating the day of the year not only to the week of the year but,
more importantly, to the day of the week as well.
No other system of notation makes sense than one in which a
larger unit consistently precedes a smaller unit in the way
in which thousands come before hundreds and hundreds, in
turn, before tens. Therefore, the first number in the Y.W.D.
code refers to the largest unit of time used here, that is
the year.
This year number is not based on any religious ethnically, territorially or
otherwise
exclusivistic calendar.
Instead it is based on an event which is of international significance
and recognized as real by all regardless of religious, nonreligious or
political persuasion.
Such an event is the end of the Second World War and provisionally
—not ultimately!— year 1 is taken to be the first full
calendar year after the end of that global war.
This site was started in the year 50 aSWW, that is, in the 50th (ordinal)
year after the end of the Second World
War.
The second number in the Y.W.D. code refers to the week of the
year, and the third number to the day of the week, both in accordance
with the Quaternary Metric World Calendar. This is a perpetual
calendar in that the years are uniform in the correspondence of days
of the week and dates. Moreover, it is transparently perpetual
in that the day of the week is part of the date, and therefore
immediately visible, at least when using the Year-Week-Day code.
By allowing one, or sometimes two, weeks of eight days the Metric Calendar
can do with a single time cycle, thus preventing the need for separate
year and week cycles as in the hitherto most frequently used
Gregorian-Christian calendar called "religious-imperial" in the
Model of Neutral-Inclusivity.
(The length of the Metric week is based on nothing else than the physical
fact that, on Earth, there are 365.24 days in a solar year, and the
mathematical fact that of the closest integers —365, 366 and 364,
in that order— 364 is the only one with a suitable factorization.
The one nontrivial factor pair of 365 is 5x73; the three of 366 are 2x183,
3x122 and 6x61.
In the first instance, it is therefore quite possible to consider a
standard week of five or six days, but the integers 365 and 366 do not
have any factor which could be used for a number of months consisting of
an integer number of such weeks.
On the other hand, 364 has no fewer than five nontrivial factor pairs:
2x182, 4x91, 7x52, 13x28 and 14x26, in which there is also a special
connection between the second, third and fourth pairs,
because 52=4x13.
In view of the traditional availability of the words week and
month it is most reasonable, then, to use 7 for the number of days
in a week and 13 for the number of 4-week months in a year.)
Instead of the Y.W.D. code, it is also possible to use a Year-Month-Day
or Y.M.D. code in combination with the Metric Calendar, since each
four-week period covers one month of exactly 28 days, with the exception
of Central Month in the middle of the year and, once every four years,
the last month of the year, which last 29 days.
For practical purposes, however, the use of weeks rather than months is to
be preferred. Thus, the number of weeks (52) can be divided by 2 and 4
equal parts of the year, whereas the number of months (13) cannot be
further subdivided.
Furthermore, the Year-Month-Day code is one digit or character longer, if
using the number of the month (01 to 13), and even two
characters longer, if using the abbreviation for its name, such as
ENE for the first month, called "Early Northeast" in
This Language.
It will be immediately clear in which month the date falls, but for the 8th
to the 28th day of the month the day of the week is not as transparent as
in the Y.W.D. code,
altho
fixed and still easy to find by subtracting 7, 14 or 21 days.
In the document
Go Global, Go Metric! you can see
today's date both in the practical Y.W.D. and in the more formal Y.M.D.
notation.
The Quaternary Metric Calendar was introduced in
section 5.2.1 of the Book of
Symbols of the Model of Neutral-Inclusivity published in the 41st year
aSWW.
The Model (and the
picture at the bottom of this page) uses typically
neutralistic names for the Metric months, such as Northern and
Southern Equinoctial Month.
TRINPsite offers a
Metric diary for every year and everyone on Earth
which lets you choose between the
denominational Model
names and the nondenominational compass names.
In this text we will use the latter, universal names.
(For more about this question of nomenclature see the document entitled
"Chronology".)
At
the end of A Quaternary
Metric Calendar it is explained what defines the true and inclusive
year 1.
That year and the inauguration of the succeeding new era is still an event
to be looked forward to.
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• a global calendar worldwide
• ethnically and otherwise inclusive
• as metric and modern as the meter
• as natural and ancient as nature
• and transparently perpetual
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On Earth, the solar year and the day are naturally given units of time,
unlike, for example, the second, which is the result of a chaotic
subdivision of the day unworthy of science.
However, any calendar which takes both the length of the year and
the length of the day into account will be inaccurate to some degree,
because there are not a whole number of days, but 365.24 of them in a year.
A regular year is therefore 0.07% shorter than the average; a leap year
0.21% longer than the average (and 0.27% longer than a regular year).
Yet, as far as months and quarters are concerned, calendars can diverge
widely in accuracy.
Since the months of the Metric World Calendar are always 28 days long,
with one exception in regular years and two exceptions in leap years, this
calendar is the most accurate, or least inaccurate, of solar calendars.
For those interested in working days it should be added that the number of
these days is also the same in every month and quarter.
The new calendar is certainly much more accurate than such a freak of
culture as the one which is currently most frequently used by state
religionists
and their fellow travelers
thru time.
The following table should illustrate this:
| CALENDAR INACCURACY
| METRIC
| RELIGIOUS-IMPERIAL |
| Yearly |
0.1% (0.2%) |
0.1% (0.2% in leap years) |
| Quarterly |
0.8% |
1.4% (0.8% in leap years) |
| Monthly |
3.2% |
8.0% (4.7% in leap years) |
(Only pseudoscientists and irreliable 'experts' with scales not yet fallen
from their eyes will employ a calendar with an inaccuracy of up to 8% to
compare the statistics of the one month or quarter with those of the next
month or quarter, while pointing at differences of a few percentage points,
or even decimals, in their data.)
Conversion between the new Metric Calendar and an old calendar such as the
religious-imperial one is not a matter of exact one-to-one correspondence
as in the case of the conversion between, for example, metric liters and
imperial gallons. Thus, a religious-imperial leap year with 29 days in the
second month or an ASWW leap year with 29 days in the thirteenth and last
month will affect this correspondence, especially if these leap years are
not made to coincide with each other.
(They never coincide if ASWW leap years too must be divisible by 4, but
this is a requirement that need not be insisted upon for ASWW years, as
the use of these years is provisional.)
Moreover, the first day of the Metric Calendar will only be '22 December'
on the religious-imperial calendar if that is indeed the first day of
which noon coincides with or follows the Northern winter solstice;
otherwise the Metric New Year's day will fall earlier or later on that
calendar.
Nevertheless, the variation is not going to be more than one, or
perhaps sometimes two days, and for the time being the following
conversion table will be used for the week and day numbers:
| METRIC WORLD CALENDAR |
RELIGIOUS-IMPERIAL
CALENDAR |
month
(always 4 weeks, normally 28 days) |
week
(7 days) |
|
1
|
ENE |
Early Northeast |
1
2
3
4 |
22-28 December
29
Dec-4 January
5-11 January
12-18 January |
2
|
MNE |
Mid-Northeast |
5
6
7
8 |
19-25 January
26
Jan-1 February
2-8 February
9-15 February |
3
|
LNE |
Late Northeast |
9
10
11
12 |
16-22 February
23 Feb-1
March (-29 Feb*)
2-8 March
(1-7)
9-15 March (8-14) |
4
|
ENW |
Early Northwest |
13
14
15
16 |
16-22 March
(15-21)
23-29 March
(22-28)
30 Mar-5 Apr
(29 Mar-4 Apr)
6-12 April
(5-11) |
5
|
MNW |
Mid-Northwest |
17
18
19
20 |
13-19 April (12-18)
20-26 April
(19-25)
27 Apr-3 May
(26 Apr-2 May)
4-10 May (3-9) |
6
|
LNW |
Late Northwest |
21
22
23
24 |
11-17 May (10-16)
18-24 May
(17-23)
25-31 May (24-30)
1-7 June
(31 May-6 June) |
7
|
CEN |
Central Month
(29 days) |
25
26
27
28 |
8-14 June (7-13)
15-22 June (14-21)
(8 days)
23-29 June (22-28)
30 June-6 July (29 June-5 July) |
8
|
ESE |
Early Southeast |
29
30
31
32 |
7-13 July (6-12)
14-20 July (13-19)
21-27 July (20-26)
28 July-3 Aug
(27 July-2 Aug) |
9
|
MSE |
Mid-Southeast |
33
34
35
36 |
4-10 August (3-9)
11-17 August
(10-16)
18-24 August
(17-23)
25-31 August (24-30) |
10
|
LSE |
Late Southeast |
37
38
39
40 |
1-7 September (31 Aug-6 Sept)
8-14 Sept (7-13)
15-21 Sept (14-20)
22-28 Sept
(21-27) |
11
|
ESW |
Early Southwest |
41
42
43
44 |
29 Sept-5 Oct (28 Sept-4 Oct)
6-12 October (5-11)
13-19 Oct (12-18)
20-26 Oct (19-25) |
12
|
MSW |
Mid-Southwest |
45
46
47
48 |
27 Oct-2 Nov
(26 Oct-1 Nov)
3-9
November (2-8)
10-16 Nov
(9-15)
17-23 Nov (16-22) |
13
|
LSW |
Late Southwest
(29 days in leap years) |
49
50
51
52 |
24-30 Nov (23-29)
1-7
December (30 Nov-6 Dec)
8-14 December
(7-13)
15-21 December (14 Dec-*) |
(* dates between parentheses pertain to leap
years)
In the above system every year has an extra day at the end of the first
half, while only leap years have a (second) extra day at the end of the
second half.
In this way the intercalary extra day in a leap year does not affect
the regular succession of days, of which the eight-day 26th week has
become an integral and fixed part.
In this way, too, the fixed extra day is now exactly in the middle of the
year in Central Month, so that at least in standard years the balance
between Northern and Southern months is fully maintained.
This is what both
catenical neutrality and planetary
inclusivity require.
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