User talk:Honandal2

Welcome!

Hello, Honandal2, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions, especially your edits to Calendar (New Style) Act 1750. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:

• Introduction and Getting started
• Contributing to Wikipedia
• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
• How to create your first article
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You may also want to complete the Wikipedia Adventure, an interactive tour that will help you learn the basics of editing Wikipedia. You can visit the Teahouse to ask questions or seek help.

Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or , and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome! John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:42, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

Citing sources

It would be helpful if you could provide a bit more information on the books you cited and better still, the specific page. The template cite book is a useful aid to ensuring that you get all the important items of data included. Let me know if you need any help. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:46, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

Help me!

Please help me with...

I have been working on part of an article about the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 under the heading Why the UK income tax year begins on 6 April:

Calendar (New Style) Act 1750#Why the United Kingdom income tax year begins on 6 April

Someone else has edited the citation for my first quotation from the Alexander Phillip book. I like the way this has put the author's name and book title below the quotation and I'd like to know how to do this. I am less happy about the way the reference now includes explanatory material about the definition of the financial year because it looks too dense. I would prefer to deal with that separately. I have spent some time trying to understand how the citation works without much success. Could you please tell how to get the citation of the author and names of the work to appear below while at the same time excluding the explanation about the financial buried in the citation?

Regards

Alan O'Brien

Honandal2 (talk) 14:10, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Several other editors have worked on aspects of the article alongside you, so look at the article's history to find out who made the changes you are concerned with and write to them on the talk page of the article to ask if the modification you seek can be agreed to. I think the edit you are referring to is this one by John Maynard Friedman. — jmcgnh^{(talk) (contribs)} 15:28, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Hello Alan, could you point me at the specific citation that you want to unbundle, and I'll try to resolve the problem. I'm sure I should be able to see it but it doesn't leap off the page.

By the way, the fancy style for book citations is provided by template:cite book, I'm not that clever! If it takes your fancy, you might like template:cite journal too. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:52, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. I attach below the first paragraph under the heading together with the quote which follows. My query concerns note 18 which also incorporates a note d. There is nothing I object to but, as I said, I'd like to know how to do a reference to an author and book in the way it appears below the quotation and I will look at your suggestions. I'd also prefer not to have the explanation of the financial year embedded in the reference. This is the passage and I have bolded the relevant bit which is right at the end:

Several theories have been proposed for the odd beginning of the British tax year on 6 April. The one most commonly found on British tax websites stems from a book published in 1921 by Alexander Philip.[18] In a brief passage Philips says that eleven days were added to the old tax year which began on 25 March. Then from 1753 until 1799 the tax year began on 5 April. He goes on to say that in 1800 a further day was added so that thereafter the tax year began on 6 April. The extra day was added, he says, because 1800 had 366 days in the Julian calendar but only 365 in the Gregorian calendar. He does not say why it was necessary to add another day. Further, he continues, the tax year was not changed when a thirteenth Julian leap day was skipped in 1900, so the tax year in the United Kingdom still begins on 6 April.[19] The passage is:

"A curious instance of the persistence of the old style is to be found in the date of the financial year of the British Exchequer. Prior to 1752 that year officially commenced on 25th March. In order to ensure that if should always comprise a complete year the commencement of the financial year was altered to the 5th April. In 1800, owing to the omission of a leap year day observed by the Julian calendar, the commencement of the financial year was moved forward one day to 6th April, and 5th April became the last day of the preceding year. In 1900, however, this pedantic correction was overlooked, and the financial year is still held to terminate of 5th April, as it so happens that the Easter celebration occurs just about that time—indeed one result is that about one-half of the British financial years include two Easters and about one-half contain no Easter date."[d] — Alexander Philip, The Calendar: its history, structure and improvement[18]

Did you mean to do this?:

A curious instance of the persistence of the old style is to be found in the date of the financial year of the British Exchequer. Prior to 1752 that year officially commenced on 25th March. In order to ensure that if should always comprise a complete year the commencement of the financial year was altered to the 5th April. In 1800, owing to the omission of a leap year day observed by the Julian calendar, the commencement of the financial year was moved forward one day to 6th April, and 5th April became the last day of the preceding year. In 1900, however, this pedantic correction was overlooked, and the financial year is still held to terminate of 5th April, as it so happens that the Easter celebration occurs just about that time—indeed one result is that about one-half of the British financial years include two Easters and about one-half contain no Easter date.

— Alexander Philip, The Calendar: its history, structure and improvement

I deleted {{efn|.}}|author=[[Alexander Philip]] |source=''The Calendar: its history, structure and improvement'' from your version because when you use the reference technique <ref name=Philip />, it is called a 'named reference' and it means 'use again the reference already given above, named 'Philip' (the one that looks like <ref name=Philip>{{cite book| etc etc, instead of the ordinary <ref>{{cite book| etc etc. You name a reference if you think you might want to use it again. You will need to put quotes around the name if it contains a space or special character. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:28, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

And {{efn| intriduces a footnote so if you don't want the footnote again, remove it. --John Maynard Friedman (talk)

Many thanks for this. Most helpful. Could you tell what the purpose of the colon at the start of a paragraph is for?

It is to do indenting, especially on talk pages, it makes it easy to see which reply goes with which point. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:28, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

An extra colon says I'm replying to the point above with one less colon --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:28, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

and back to the same level again. When it gets to about ten colons, someone just restarts the indenting! --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:28, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Asterisks to make bullet points can be stacked the same way.--John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:28, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks again. As you say, trying to grapple with the material you are writing is hard enough and there isn't a lot brain power left to absorb the technicalities of Wikipedia. 2A02:C7F:220:C700:749E:693E:C20B:B21A (talk) 14:44, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

References

Calendar (New Style) Act

You may notice that edited your quotes in Calendar New Style Act, leaving only a cryptic edit note. It was a cockup, not a conspiracy: I've explained at the Act talk page. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:28, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. I will study this. 2A02:C7F:220:C700:9FA:509B:A596:E02A (talk) 15:30, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Doing citations

There are many many articles on Wikipedia that need the kind of researched improvement that you made to the Calendar Act. I too found citations hard work at the beginning and have collected miscellaneous tips at User:John Maynard Friedman#My useful links: feel free to raid. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:28, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

I did a lot of work on the article for Milton Keynes to achieve WP:GA: the vast majority of it to fix citations and I learned a great deal (the hard way) in the process. If there is something you need to do, you might find an example there.--John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:28, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Finally, note how I signed off each new point, although I have made a number of distinct points in this one session. That makes it easier for anyone replying to be clear which point they are addressing. I also created new sections, for much the same reason.--John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:28, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

2A02:C7F:220:C700:749E:693E:C20B:B21A (talk) 14:44, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. I will try to remember to do this. 2A02:C7F:220:C700:749E:693E:C20B:B21A (talk) 14:45, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

Prettified citations

You may notice that I tarted up the George III citations. It took me years to figure out how to do that, so I suggest you continue to cite in the simple way that you've been doing and leave it to me to snazz them up. Actually the only aspect really worth having is the ability to give the URL of a specific page in a book. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:36, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: Thanks for this. I hadn't notice but I will take a look and try to learn. I have also been tempted to expand the main entry for the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750. I hope it helps and doesn't cause further aggravation!2A02:C7F:220:C700:5C84:E4BE:A72E:6E2C (talk) 10:25, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

I can't see anyone objecting to properly sourced and well-written material, as you are creating now. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:43, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

New article

Read all about it here: Help:Your first article. Also, WP:SPLIT. Good luck! --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:32, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

I have at last revised the section about the origin of the income tax year. The substance is the same but I have substantially recast the material in an attempt to better reflect the Wikipedia style and to try to make things clearer. The material is still lengthy, which has been the subject of criticism but I hope it can be made a separate article with a link to it in the Calendar Act article. Many thanks!

Hi, it was a bit of a fluke that I saw this. If you want to draw the attention of a specific person or people to something you have written on a talk page, the template {{ping}} exists for that purpose. So to wake me up, you would preface your remark with {{ping|John Maynard Friedman}}. Also, even on your own talk page, it is good habit to sign and date your posts using four tildes as mentioned in the Welcome above.

Do you want me to look at it? If so, where is it? Have you put it in draft space (begins "Draft: etc ). --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:28, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: Hi! Sorry about forgetting (again!) to use the four tildes. Thanks for the ping information. Another thing I didn't know! I wasn't sure whether the ping stuff should come right at the start of the line or after the tildes. I drafted the revised section on the income tax year in a sandbox but then copied into the same place in the article about the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 which implemented the move to the Gregorian calendar. I would be very grateful for any comments you have but I hesitate to trouble you again. I revised the section because a couple of other people criticised it. They said it lacked the Wiki style and was unclear. Honandal2 (talk) 15:51, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Hi, first, I've found your revised version where I should have looked in the first place! At first glance it reads a lot better. It is positioned appropriately in the article so Our American Friends can stop reading at that point if they like. I will continue reviewing.

You will notice that I tagged a quote with "page needed", When you find it, there are two ways to put it in (a) do completely new citation, differing only from the preceding one by having a different value in the "page= " or (b) use a clever template called {{rp}}: suppose you wanted to cite page 123 of Phillips above, you put this. If you expect to cite the same book many times, option (b) is going to be a lot easier.

I was being too clever by half. Of course you wouldn't have known that putting "nowiki" tags around some markup mean "show the markup syntax, don't do the actual markup. So I should have told you to write @John Maynard Friedman:. Surrounding a template name with {{tl|...}} (like I did with the rp template above)is a similar shortcut to highlight the template.

Finally, you should put your signature tildes at the end of your contribution (NB only on talk pages, never in articles).

Phew! Here endeth the lesson :-P --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:22, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: Hi! Many thanks again for your help. Unfortunately I failed to understand your explanation above about "nowiki" tags. Did I get the ping thing wrong? Finally, I am not sure why you tagged "page needed" apparently against the Poole quotation but I may be looking in the wrong place. If you look at the footnote 25 you should see it includes the page number and the footnote number on that page. Or are you referring to something else? Thanks again!2A02:C7F:220:C700:172:784D:F1B6:A891 (talk) 17:30, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

No, you don't ever need to use nowiki unless you want to explain some obscure wikipedia control.

At 'Accounting practice', where you wrote

... so the national accounts continued to be made up to end on the Old Style quarter-days of 5 January, 5 April, 5 July and 10 October.

Of course if it is the same page and footnote as you cited a few paragraphs above, then there is no problem and you can just delete my 'page required' tag.

BTW, best to sign in as Honandal2 if you can. That way, if anyone pings you, you will see it!

I've been through the whole rewrite now and it really is a big improvement. I suspect now that you won't have to hive it off to a subsidiary article but give it a few days to see what consensus emerges. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:58, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

References

Citing UK legislation

Hi, I don't know if this is a help or a hindrance so you might want to experiment in your sandbox first.

• Template:Cite legislation UK (A template to cite UK primary and secondary legislation, as provided by legislation.gov.uk. I don't know how well it works for 200-year-old Acts, though.)

But I suspect it may be safer than citing a google page? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:31, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: Hi. Many thanks for this. I will study it. I'd like to use the approved method. I try to take advantage of your suggestions but I am not doing enough of this to keep them in mind and I tend to either forget they exist or I forget how to use them. I have linked to Google (and other) pages where they contain copies of the legislation I mention. There may be some readers who want to access to the source material. The links worked when I wrote the section and I hope they will continue to do so. The links have been stable for some time but there is no guarantee. I must say Google (and others) have done the world a great service by making available lots of statutes and case law free of charge. Fancy commercial legal databases also exist but they are expensive subscription services.Honandal2 (talk) 14:12, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: I think the template you mention is designed to work with statutes that are held on the UK legislation online database. A look at the explanation on the UK website indicates that it contains all statutes from 1988 and also older statutes which are still live. Thus the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 is included but old repealed or expired legislation isn't. Hence my recourse to Google and other free databases for these defunct measures. A further issue is that statutes in the 18th century and earlier were not given "short titles". This idea came in later when the authorities decided it would be more convenient to have an easy way to refer to legislation. They extended the idea in 1896 to old legislation which was still live. The short title "Calendar (New Style) Act 1750", for example, was bestowed retrospectively by the Short Titles Act 1896 Schedule 1. The original long title for the Calendar Act is "An Act for Regulating the Commencement of the Year; and for correcting the calendar now in use". Defunct measures, such as old Tax Acts, were not given short titles. I will try to use the template for references to current acts but it may not be practical for old acts.Honandal2 (talk) 14:59, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

That's fine. Maybe if this exercise hasn't totally removed your will to live, you may find it useful in the future.

By the way, I really seem to have caused confusion with nowiki tags. Please don't use them with your pings (or anything else you are likely to want to do any time soon). --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:56, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: I have been trying to use the Cite legislation template to insert a reference to the Short Titles Act 1896 c.14. This is a live Act available on the UK legislation website. I have tried a number of times but I am doing something wrong because I keep getting a link to the wrong Act, namely, the Housing (Financial Provisions) (Scotland) Act 1978! Can you tell me what I am doing wrong please? The link appears as:

"Short Titles Act: Schedule 1", legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives, 1978 c. 14 (sch. 1)

The template produces this:

"Short Titles Act: Schedule 1", legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives, 1978 c. 14 (sch. 1)Honandal2 (talk) 10:52, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, I can't see what's wrong either. I'm baffled. I thought it might be your capital Y for "|year=" but my version gets nothing at all!

"Short Titles Act 1896: Schedule 1", legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives, 1896 c. 14 (sch. 1)

I also tried "date="

Options now are to just do it by hand the old way or else leave a question at Template talk:Cite legislation UK and hope someone responds. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:05, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

(The advantage of using the template is this: if the National Archives change their system, then Wikipedia can update the template to match, making all the articles that use it up to date in one fell swoop. This happened to the National Statistics "2011 census" site: all the pages that used Template:NOMIS2011 were brought up to date a few days later and it was a real pain to find and fix those that had not. So I suppose it is worth pursuing the question. If course you could hand-craft it for now and replace it when you find what's wrong with the template. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:26, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

• Found it The problem is with the National Archives site: their copy has not been OCRed, so they can't identify "First Schedule" as Schedule 1. So taking your version, slightly amended:
  • "Short Titles Act 1896", legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives, 20 September 1896, 1896 c. 14, retrieved 6 November 2020

and in a citation, the Schedule can be added back like this:

I don't know why we have to have 1896 three times though. Do we really need the date of Assent? I'm not convinced we need 'access date' either, it's not like it is a volatile web site. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:53, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: Well done! Good bit of detective work. I agree about the repeated 1896 and also the fact we don't need the access date. I am tied up for a while and will get back to article later.Honandal2 (talk) 10:12, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

FYI, I have raised a challenge at Template should not have default values (it was this regression to a default that sent you to the Scottish Act). You don't need to do anything but the way I used nowiki to explain my point may be of interest if you have nothing more pressing on your time. Also, I spotted the reason for 1896 being displayed so often: poor design. I don't speak template-ish, otherwise I would change the output so that it displayed as

• Short titles Act 1896 (1896 c. 14), The National Archives (legislation.gov.uk), enacted 20 September 1896 etc.

but best to focus on one thing at a time and the current practice of substituting something arbitrary for missing data is by far the more serious issue. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:04, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

References

Nowiki

When you have nothing better to do, you can find a coherent version jof what I was trying and failing to explain, at Help:Wikitext, which covers nowiki among other interesting nitty-gritty items. I recommend the help:cheatsheet article linked from there too.

Just to satisfy your curiousity, it is not something you need to give any priority to. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:02, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman:Thanks. I hope I have now got the pinging right! Thanks for the reference to further guidance.Honandal2 (talk) 17:07, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes, that hit the spot. Thank you. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 18:56, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Old time at which Bills become law

@John Maynard Friedman: Did you raise a query about giving authority for the time at which a Bill became law before 1793? I have tried to deal with this but it has led to a lengthy explanation. I had hoped that a link to the 1793 Act would do because that explains the old procedure. I don't mind giving a fuller explanation but I am conscious that some may not like it!Honandal2 (talk) 15:49, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

I don't think I did but if I had noticed it then I certainly would have! Well intercepted :-)

The text you have done is "necessary and sufficient" to meet the need to explain a curious anomaly that I bet throws genologists, it doesn't need more, at least not in this article. Don't be surprised if someone demotes your explanation to a footnote but it certainly won't be deleted.

I wonder if you should add the same text to Old Style and New Style dates? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:57, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

More about references

@John Maynard Friedman: May I trouble you with a further query about references, particularly when you need to cite the same one more than once? My original method was simplistic. For example, I cited The Handbook of Dates like this:Honandal2 (talk) 14:44, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Note: in all cases I have substituted [ for< and ] for> so that the workings are visible.Honandal2 (talk) 14:44, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

[ref name=Cheney]]A Handbook of Dates Edited by C R Cheney, revised by Michael Jones 2000[/ref>]Honandal2 (talk) 14:44, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

[ref name=Cheney /]Honandal2 (talk) 14:44, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Later someone (perhaps you?) improved the citation under Accounting convention in the part about the tax year and I am glad to accept the change:Honandal2 (talk) 14:44, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

[/ref] A Handbook of Dates,[ref]Cheney, C R (1945), revised by Michael Jones (2000). A Handbook of Dates for students of British History. Cambridge University Press. See Table III in Chapter 2 which lists the Exchequer Years from Henry I to William IV. Every year ends on the quarter day, 29 September.[/ref]Honandal2 (talk) 14:44, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

My problem now is that I haven't been able to work out how to include ref name=Cheney so that the reference can be used again without creating another footnote. Can you advise please?Honandal2 (talk) 14:44, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Looks like you've cracked it, certainly it looks ok now. "Note: in all cases I have substituted [ for< and ] for> so that the workings are visible": now you see why we have WP:NOWIKI! There is even a shortcut for it on your editing screen if you use the desktop editor, you select the text that you want to be 'escaped' (not interpreted, shown as is), then click the button that looks like two left and two right square brackets with a diagonal line through. (The squiggle on the line above does the four tildes signature, as it is such a hardship to do it by hand.) --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:29, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Harvard referencing

In general, I don't like wp:Harvard referencing, especially when it is embedded in the text (Friedman, 2020) like that. It has to be done in paper documents but not when hypertext is available. There is a rolling debate on the subject in Wikipedia, I won't go into the detail unless you really want it. But it is very useful, though, when you want to cite the same book multiple times – putting almost exactly the same thing in ref tags is tiresome to write and tiresome for later editors because of the risk of mistaking one instance of the citation for another. So you will see that I changed the multiple citations of Cheney to use template:sfn. I'm not suggesting you do any, just letting you know what I'm up to [but if you do want to do it, let me know and I'll try to give you one of my impenetrable explanations 😎 ].

By the way, did you know about "View history" at the top of the editing window? V useful to see what has changed (and by whom) since the last time you were here. Also, if you have multiple changes to the same section, use "Show preview" rather than "Publish changes" to check each change as you do it, then "Publish changes" when all done.

Article is shaping up nicely now: think we may be well on the way to achieving WP:Good article status! --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:52, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: Thanks again. I am very grateful for your comments and your editing of my text. I had not heard of Harvard referencing. I will look at this. Grateful for any further explanation. Potentially there is more to add to the article and it would be good to get it in the approved style from the start!2A02:C7F:220:C700:AC01:44C8:738A:A6E7 (talk) 18:12, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman:I realised I had multiple entries for the Cheney reference. However, I did this because, in addition to the basic reference, I wanted to add specific references to particular parts of the book to different parts of the article. I wasn't sure how to do this without having a completely separate reference to each instance2A02:C7F:220:C700:AC01:44C8:738A:A6E7 (talk) 18:12, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: I did not know about "View History" and will look at this too. I was aware of "Show Preview" and I have been using it quite a bit. However, I get worried about computer etc failure suddenly leading to a loss of work. Hence I also do a bit of "Publish changes" to try and ensure the work is saved on Wikipedia. Perhaps this is unnecessary?2A02:C7F:220:C700:AC01:44C8:738A:A6E7 (talk) 18:12, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

The convincing reason to use template:sfn with Cheney (and any other source that you need to cite multiple times) is that long template:cite book citation goes in Sources at the end and then, every time you need it in the body, you can have {{sfn|Cheney|1945|p=<page>}} or {{sfn|Cheney|1945|loc=<section>}} as needed (without the nowiki wrappers, used just to avoid activating the template). If you look at History, you should see where I've done that and how the effect is exactly the same. But as I said, it really is only worth the effort if you need to cite more than four or five pages from the same book. I was editing for the best part of ten years before I needed to use it (and I must say I found it quite difficult to understand because there are multiple ways of using Harvard referencing and I had to machete my way through a thicket of seemingly contradictory explanations before I found this method).

Yes, I agree about 'pre-emptive' use of Publish changes, especially if someone else may be editing because it is a pain to get recover from an edit conflict.

By the way, you only ping me once and only sign the last paragraph of your message (or after it, as some prefer).

--John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:41, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: Thanks! The technique you've used on Cheney is excellent. It produces an ideal result. Sorry about the excess pinging and use of ~. I got confused about what was needed.Honandal2 (talk) 10:40, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

The nice thing about the technique is this: if you mouse over the reference number for an ordinary citation, a box pops up giving the full citation. If you mouse over the reference number for one of these sfn citations, the first thing that pops up is the short form "Cheney (1945), p123" but then if you mouse over that pop-up, you get the long citation. Is that clever or is that clever??

No need to apologise, nobody expects you to study every line of the WP:Manual of Style and all the other WPs. We learn by making mistakes and correcting them.

In case you miss it, I've started to use the normal way to contact editors in context, which is to use the talk page for the article concerned. Using template:U mentions another editor's name and the 'bell' symbol at the top of the window lights up, but they don't get an email as well. (As a general principle, we assume that if you are editing a page, you've got a wp:watch on it [to keep an eye out for vandalism or incompetence]: this watch automatically includes the talk page, so it only appropriate to use the U template for a new topic – unless there are multiple participants and you need to make clear who it is that you are replying to). --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:00, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Talk pages

I have split your questions into two new sections to make it easier to reply. BTW, feel free to keep asking for help: anybody can do pretty links like I do, generating new content requires subject knowledge that not many people actually have.

@John Maynard Friedman: Yes the technique you used on Cheney is really neat! I have missed the talk page for the article and I don't know how to access it. Can you point me in the right direction? Honandal2 (talk) 12:02, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

There are a few ways to do it, according to what is most convenient from where you are at the time:

1. every article has a talk page that looks like talk:article name, for example Talk:Easter Act 1928. You can go directly to the talk page by typing that in the search box at the far right of the second row of the Wikipedia 'banner' (window heading).
2. When you are already in an article, again on the second line of the banner, this time far left, there is Article and Talk. That "talk" is a link to the article talk page: click on it just go there or right click to open it in a new tab if you don't want to lose your place in the original article.
3. Add the article to your watchlist by clicking on the star (second row of banner, Read / Edit / View history / ☆. Then whenever you check your watchlist (top row of banner, RHS), you will see any changes in your watched articles or their talk-pages since you last looked.
4. Someone invites you to respond to a query by pinging you or using your name in a U template.

Finally, I guess you already know this but just in case: personal opinions or remarks never go in articles (also known as "main space").

--John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:58, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: Thanks for this helpful explanation.Honandal2 (talk) 16:59, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Links

I'd also welcome advice on links to Wikipedia articles. I have just been expanding the section on amendments to the Calendar Act and inserted links to the relevant Wikepedia articles. All the links are "bad". I did the insertion in the same way as for external web pages, which I gather is not the right way.Honandal2 (talk) 12:02, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

I'll get back later on the other things but right now the important item is that you can't cite a Wikipedia article, see WP:selfref; nor can you cite a source that is a copy of Wikipedia, see wp:circular. You can search other article for a citation to reuse, if that is any help? If you want to copy a chunk of another article, you need to give credit in your edit note. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:30, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: I am puzzled by the bans you mention because I found you can cite another Wikipedia article but the method is different. For example, in my note about the Easter Act 1928 I felt it was helpful to provide a link to the full Wikipedia article on that Act which has more background and a link to the statute. I found I could do this by selecting and copying the main title of the other article and pasting it between two sets of square brackets ie Easter Act 1928. I confess I inserted the square brackets manually but I assume there is probably a better way to do it.Honandal2 (talk) 14:27, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

It is absolutely valid and indeed essential to embed wikilinks in articles, like you did with the Easter Act 1928. What you can't do is to write something like In the UK it is possible to have two Easters in the same year. because Wikipedia proudly declares that it is not a reliable source since anybody can put in anything and it may not be noticed. That is why we are so fussy about citing everything: if you are researching a new topic, then Wikipedia will tell you where to find a source that is reliable for the statement made (and, as many undergraduate plagiarists have found to their cost) you should verify that it actually does say what it is being claimed to say and nothing important in the source is being conveniently ignored (see wp:Cherry picking). --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:58, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

References

Index to statutes, Worldcat.org

Annoyingly, after all time spent searching Google Books looking for records of Acts of Parliament, I've just found this source

• Resource: The Acts of Parliament at Alsatia

I thought perhaps you might find it useful when researching your next big contribution! It would be a shame to let it go to waste.

• Do you know about Worldcat.org? Obviously not ever so useful right now to be told which is the nearest library that has a book but very useful in telling you its ISBN (which Google Books doesn't, though it recognises ISBN-based searches), also the full list of contributors, editors, publishers.

--John Maynard Friedman (talk) 23:04, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: Thanks for this. I knew about Alsatia but did not know about Worldcat. Possibly you may like to know about the sites I've found. I needed to do a lot of online research looking for documents, acts, statutes, books etc when I was working on my book about calendar reform and the tax year. You may of course know about them already. There are two other free sites which list UK statutes and which may be a development of Alsatia.

Statutes of the Realm covers 1101 to 1713 [2]

The Statutes Project covers Statutes of Great Britain 1707 to 1918[3]

You will see that these sites mention the Hathi Trust as one source. It is worth noting that Hathi has much more than Statutes. Many old out of print books are available for free [4]

A free source of old UK court cases is English Reports which covers 1220 to 1873[5]

Lex Justis is a comprehensive and expensive commercial legal database but you can get a free 3 days trial [6]

Another useful site giving links to legal resources is Venables Legal Resources[7]

I live in Surrey and I found Surrey libraries free Adult Online Reference Shelf helpful although cuts in resources have reduced coverage a bit. It can be used from home. This is for Surrey residents but I think many local libraries have similar facilities. Among the contents of the Surrey site are [8]:

The Gazette which is the Government's official public record. There is a historical archive going back to 1665.

The Times Digital Archive 1785 to 2010.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Who's Who and Who Was Who.

Oxford English Dictionary

British Newspaper Archive but, unfortunately this is now only available in a Surrey library. My wife has a subscription to Find My Past, a family history website, which has online access to many old newspapers.Honandal2 (talk) 14:47, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

Eleven days added to prevent loss of tax?

As I believe it was you who wrote that section, I won't bother putting this on the talk page. Before I hid it behind a comment envelope, the section Calendar (New Style) Act 1750#Eleven days added to prevent loss of tax? said that two editions of the 1798 Act exist, but the URLs provided are identical. Shurely shome mishtake? (Private Eye, passim). --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:25, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman and Talk: Yesh! Guilty. Honandal2 (talk) 20:28, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

I don't see that we need to mention the existence of two editions in any case, as it is wandering off topic again. --John Maynard Friedman (talk)

@John Maynard Friedman and Talk: Agreed one is enough. My guilt is especially great because I was aware of the mistake and intended to revisit the references. I will look at this later.Honandal2 (talk) 09:54, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Poole

Do you have a copy of Poole? It is being suggested at the article talk page as a source to clear up the misapprehension that the change was "smuggled past" the CoE. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 08:51, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman and Talk: I do have a copy of Robert Poole's book. I also have a copy of an article he wrote which summarises the issues a bit more concisely. This is the relevant passage which I hope will help:

The principal parliamentary debate of Chesterfield's bill took place in the House of Lords on 18 March 1751, with seventy-three bishops and peers present to hear Macclesfield and Chesterfield explain the measure. Two of the three main components of the Act required little explanation. The commencement of the official year on 1 January instead of 25 March was a convenience in line with common practice, with no real ideological implications. The new Easter, more surprisingly, did not feature in public debate, perhaps because few people understood how Easter worked anyway. Care was taken, however, to defuse the issue. The papal origins of the calendar were glossed over, and whilst the involvement of British experts was trumpeted, that of the Roman Catholic mathematician Father Charles Walmesley was hushed up. Further to conceal the Roman connection, a peculiarly British system for determining the date of Easter was drawn up to be inserted in the Book of Common Prayer, different from the Gregorian in execution but identical in effect: "the papal calendar with the papal moon omitted", as a later writer put it. [de Morgan.] All this had been carefully squared by the astronomers with Archbishop Herring of Canterbury, to whom it had been explained as a technical correction which left intact the traditional Anglican method of calculating Easter by golden numbers.

The article is called: “Give us our Eleven day!” Calendar reform in eighteenth century England published by Oxford Academic Past & Present, Volume 149, Issue 1, November 1995, Pages 95–139, page 111 to 112.

https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/149/1/95/1460442?redirectedFrom=fulltext

This is a subscription database and you can only see the first page for free. Poole's book says the same thing in much greater detail in Chapter 8.

I had ping from you last night at 08:51 but could find no message on the talk page.Honandal2 (talk) 10:23, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman and Talk: I meant to add that I think it is clear from Poole that the Easter changes were smuggled past the Church. Honandal2 (talk) 10:33, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

I guess you aren't following talk:Calendar (New Style) Act 1750#Deceiving the Church of England? Another editor quoted the same commentary and says (and I agree) that it makes clear that the Church was fully consulted in advance and contributed, so clearly they were not deceived. So the question remains: at whom was the 'glossing over' aimed? (We need a historian's view, we can't draw an inference ourselves, see next para).

Does Poole answer Jc3s5h's challenge (at talk:Calendar (New Style) Act 1750#A better Computus, first reply), which agrees that Macclesfield's speech [where he mentions the CoE preference for Golden Number over Gregory's impenetrable Epacts] is indeed relevant but that Wikipedia's wp:No original research rule says that we need to cite a historian (such as Poole) who describes it and gives it context (rather than draw inferences ourselves).

• When you ping me, you need to put a | between the word 'ping' and my name. You don't need to prefix your pings with a ":" unless you really want to indent, and you don't need the "|talk".

I didn't ping you at 08:51 (20:51?) last night but rather I left a message (above) at 08:51 this morning, to say that we don't need to go into the detail of there being two editions of the 1798 Land Tax Act, it is incidental. [The time stamp on my signature is a little later because I forgot to sign it.] I've experienced that sort confusion myself too: the solution is to look at the History of your talk page and that will tell you who changed what, when and how.

--John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:14, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: Thanks. I had not been following the other discussion. The expression "smuggled past" is ambiguous. A smuggler hopes to beat the Customs by entirely concealing his activities. This is not what happened here: Chesterfield & Co knew Bishops sat in the House of Lords and would be aware of the Bill. I took "smuggled past" to mean something different, namely, that the real Catholic nature of the Easter reform was obscured by clever spin which persuaded Archbishop Herring that this was a technical change based on purely British scientific research. This is what I take Poole to be saying in his book and in the article I quoted : "All this had been carefully squared by the astronomers with Archbishop Herring of Canterbury, to whom it had been explained as a technical correction which left intact the traditional Anglican method of calculating Easter by golden numbers". I attach below an extract from Chapter 8 of the book, page 115 onwards, which gives some more detail:

… Davall (Counsel who drafted the Bill) approached him (Archbishop Herring) tactfully. He began by soliciting the Archbishop’s opinion on the uncontroversial question of how the eleven days could best be deducted … Then came the difficult bit, introduced by a flatteringly lengthy explanation of the Easter tables for the prayer book, which were enclosed for Herring’s special perusal. The error in the Julian Easter was explained in astronomical terms, and Davall opined neutrally that “the full moons as computed by the Gregorian calendar, happen sufficiently near to the true ones, to found our ecclesiastical computations upon”. However, the Gregorian system of epacts had brought with it complicated rules which were best avoided …

… On the question of how the eleven days should be deducted, he [Herring] simply passed on the comments of “a better judge than myself”. The conclusion was that the days should be deducted in one block …

… Herring had nothing in particular to say about Easter, but he was nervous in the extreme about the general issue of altering church feasts …

Poole says Herring was exercised about the changes to feast days because this might stir up the mob. However, of course, the material changes would occur not because of Easter reform but because of the omission of 11 days so that, for example, Christmas would fall 11 days earlier. The moveable feasts dependent on Easter already changed each year and any different changes would not be noticeable after the reform.

Hence I am not sure the Church was, as you suggest, "fully consulted". Consulted but not fully and deceived by spin! Perhaps the use of "smuggled past" could be abandoned in favour of something more appropriate? Honandal2 (talk) 14:01, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks but you really need to copy and paste that explanation and quote into the article talk page. Other editors are involved and we need a consensus. I will respond there. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:34, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Reason for 6 April - conflict of sources?

Would you care to verify the text at Old Style and New Style dates#Adoption of the Gregorian calendar, which I think conflicts with what you have written at the Calendar Act article? NB that you can't give an opinion that the source given is wrong, only that it conflicts with another source and why the misunderstanding may have arisen. (I suspect the dreaded 'from', meaning 'after'). You are allowed to "draw readers' attention" but not tell them what you regard as the correct answer. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:12, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: Thanks. I think the piece you mention is wrong but I don't know what to do about it, mostly because my knowledge of Wikipedia procedure is poor. The view in the piece you mention is based on the book by Philips as cited in note 17. In the bit about the tax year under the Calendar Act I cite 4 modern sources, including my own book, as the authority for saying Philips is wrong.

Poole, Robert (1998). "9, footnote 34". Time's alteration: Calendar reform in early modern England. London: UCL Press.

Parnham, Steve (2016). The Intriguing Truth about 5th April. CreateSpace. ISBN 978-1541126596.

O'Brien, Alan (2019). Why the Tax Year Begins on Sixth April. Lulu.com. eBook is free. p. 119. ISBN 978-0244705619.

Steel, Duncan (2000). Marking time: the epic quest to invent the perfect calendar (illustrated ed.). John Wiley and Sons. p. 5. ISBN 0-471-29827-1.

Is it in order to insert a reference in the piece you mention to the section under the Calendar Act which takes an alternative view?

Your ping came as an email at 14:12. I got another at 14:13 but I couldn't seen where the message was. Honandal2 (talk) 15:18, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

You must not cite your own book. Please read WP:Conflict of interest before you do anything more. You can cite the other three sources but you really need to regularise your status first.

I think you can continue to contribute normally on condition that you don't draw any attention to your own book but, after you have read the policy articles, I advise that you use template:helpme to ask for an administrator to advise. I have no expertise or experience in this area, but it does seem to me that there is a qualitative difference between writing about an event in the past where you have accumulated a great deal of background knowledge and documents, versus writing about [aka promoting] a present-day product or policy. If it were otherwise, I suspect that there are many editors would have to self-isolate. A good place to insert the helpme request would be just below this reply. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:19, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

(Regarding the two emails, look at the history of your talk page. I wrote a message at 14:12 and corrected it at 14:13. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:19, 16 November 2020 (UTC))

@John Maynard Friedman: Thanks. Needs study!

Coming back to the Old Style and New Style dates article

I'll leave it to you how best to fix the error in the article, so a few points to note:

1. Some editors would just delete the nonsense completely. I don't think that is appropriate because the text is properly sourced (even though the source appears to be in error). The leap year in 1800 "reason", being just wrong, should certainly go, but something needs to be left about Philips. See also essay wp:verifiability not truth: it is not up to us as editors to decide what is 'true' but we can certainly give the balance of expert opinion, especially if it can be shown that an opinion is based on false premises or flawed logic.
2. A long explanation is tempting but not appropriate, because that long explanation already exists in the Calendar Act article. See wp:FORK. (You can link to it using Calendar (New Style) Act 1750#Why the United Kingdom income tax year begins on 6 April or use the wp:PIPE technique to shorten that down to something like "another article".)
3. I wonder if you could say something "An explanation given by Philips in his 19xx book Blah blah blah has caused some to misunderstand the reason for the tax year beginning on 6 April. The leap year in 1800 was irrelevant because 6 April was established before then and was not changed by it, as Poole and Steele have explained.ref ref. For an extended explanation, see start of tax year".

Or something like that anyway. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:26, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

I have gone ahead and done it anyway, see [#More citations]], below. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 00:13, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Europe

@John Maynard Friedman: I have been wondering whether it is worth trying to say something about the mention of "Europe" in the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750. I don't have a definitive explanation for the reference but it seems such a curious inclusion that something might be worth saying. This is my current draft.

The reference to Europe is unusual and does not appear in other acts or the Calendar Act 1751, which dealt with some issues overlooked by the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750. This may be because the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 was not a government measure but a private enterprise led by Lord Chesterfield. The 1750 Act was drafted by Peter Davall, a barrister recruited by Chesterfield and not the usual draftsmen used by the government. Davall may have referred to Europe because he regarded the term as encompassing Great Britain though this seems doubtful because it would have been more straightforward to refer to Great Britain. It is unlikely that Davall contemplated applying the reform to Continental Europe most of which had long since both adopted the Gregorian calendar and opted to begin the year with 1 January.

Davall may have had in mind the Crown's claim to the French throne. William the Conqueror and subsequent English monarchs were lords of substantial parts of France. From the time of Edward III in 1340 they also claimed the throne of France. Gradually the French territories were lost with Calais being the last part of the mainland to go in 1558. The Channel Islands remained under the English Crown although they had been part of the ancient kingdom of France.

The Crown’s long standing inability to enforce claims in France did not change the legal fiction and British monarchs tenaciously clung to the title of King (or Queen) of France. This only ended in 1800 when the Act of Union joined Britain to Ireland and George III quietly abandoned his claim on France, which by then had become a republic. Until then each Parliament began with a recital which asserts that, for example, George II is Regis Magnae Britanniae, Franciae & Hiberniae. The claim then is repeated in English King of Great Britain, France and Ireland. An example is the Parliament beginning on 10 November 1747.

The British acquired Gibraltar on the coast of Spain in 1704. Hence the reference to Europe in the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 may, therefore, reflect the ancient but purely theoretical claim to the French crown and the possession of Gibraltar.

What do you think? Honandal2 (talk) 15:42, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Far too much speculation and opinion for Wikipedia. "Davall may have had in mind" and "may, therefore, reflect" are definitely out. Furthermore, exploring HMG's delusions of grandeur takes us way outside the scope of this article. As a general point, I suggest that the article has reached its optimum length: anything more risks wp:TLDR, so I think it best not to extend it further. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:19, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: Thanks. OK. Will not proceed with my speculative note. I am concerned that there is an obvious oddity here which it seems wrong to ignore completely. What about merely saying the reference to Europe is unusual and the reason for it is unknown? Honandal2 (talk) 17:35, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

It is an oddity that is far from unique to this Act, pretty much all Acts from that time and before contain the same fantasy - and the reasons for it are known. So yes, I think we should ignore it.

You didn't acknowledge my 'conflict of interest' concern above: I trust that you have noted and aim to resolve asap. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 18:02, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: Europe: I've searched a bit and could not find Europe mentioned in a similar way in other Acts. Hence my wish to say something. Yes, I noted the conflict of interest point but it was enmeshed with much other advice so I was leaving it till tomorrow. But will give removal of the citation of my book priority. Honandal2 (talk) 18:23, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Well the proper place for this discussion is the article talk page, not a user talk page, as others may disagree. Yes, you are right about "Europe", I was thinking of "France" being given routinely. Fair enough but I don't think it merits more than a footnote (use template:efn). --John Maynard Friedman (talk)

@John Maynard Friedman: My book citation deleted. Honandal2 (talk) 18:28, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Ok, good. You are contributing a lot of useful original and well-sourced material, I'd hate for you to disqualify yourself on a technicality. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:26, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

(In case you miss it, I also left a reply above at #Coming back to the Old Style and New Style dates article.) --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:26, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: Thanks yet again. I am grateful that you have saved me from trouble. I have to admit that I had thought that you must not promote your book (eg Joe Bloggs wonderful book is the best etc) but I did not appreciate that merely citing it as one of a number of sources was included. Happy to accept that it is. I wonder how this would affect a leading academic in a field who has written the definitive work on a topic (not something I am claiming!). If he or she contributed it seems a pity to ban him or her from citing the best book on a topic.

Happy too to accept what you say about Europe. I may add a footnote as you suggest.

I agree the article is long enough, as you suggested above. The one section which could be expanded is Reaction and effect. This, however, is a large topic and not one I fancy doing. It might be worth adding a footnote pointing out that Dr Robert Poole's book goes into the subject in depth and there is at least one American work on the American impact (mentioned in footnote 35).

I note your reminder and helpful suggestions about Coming back to the Old Style and New Style dates article. I wil think about this another day.

Thanks again! 2A02:C7F:220:C700:34BF:F2A6:D025:DC66 (talk) 15:59, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

I have jumped in and inserted this text:

Apart from Great Britain and Ireland, the only part of Europe under British sovereignty was Gibraltar. However, each session of Parliament began with a recital of the continued the legal fiction that the King was also the rightful King of France.

.

Feel free to change if you think it can be improved. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 00:13, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

As I said above I have no expertise or experience in this area, but it does seem to me that there is a qualitative difference between writing about an event in the past where you have accumulated a great deal of background knowledge and documents, versus writing about [aka promoting] a present-day product or policy. If it were otherwise, I suspect that there are many editors would have to self-isolate. That is why I suggested that you get formal advice from an administrator. Of course another editor could cite your book (but if you were to set up another account to do so, you would breach wp:SOCKPUPPET and be cast out completely and perhaps your contributions deleted! so don't be tempted). In the example you mention, there are indeed noted and highly respected subject experts contributing to Wikipedia. Conversely, there are PR agencies who offer (at a price) to pump new products, services, pop acts, whatever, into Wikipedia [their clients don't need to be told about WP:NOFOLLOW, making it a waste of money]. Your own work is clearly well-researched and soundly based, but wp:SELFPUB exists because for every one like you there are a hundred who are not. Wikipedia can't decide whose work is 'sound' and whose is tendentious, fanboy or just sheer fantasy, so a blanket ban and a wp:No original research policy saves argument. The easy solution, as you have now taken, is simply to go back to the same sources as you used for your book and cite those. The big difference is that you can freely interpret, infer and draw conclusions in your own book but it would breach WP:SYNTH to do so here.

Actually, I think you could very validly add a sentence or three in the main body of Reaction and Effect pointing to Poole's book. Footnotes are really for explanations or for asides that it would be a real pity to ignore but can't really be considered on-topic, but the Poole material very definitely is relevant. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:52, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: Thanks. I'll look at consulting an administrator later. I will also look "Reaction and effect" later. I noticed that there were a lot of "citation needed" in the second main paragraph under "Government not keen on reform". I have just added references. Most are to Poole's book and I fear that to get them in quickly I've just done it the simple way which generates multiple references. I will go back and try to use your nifty method for avoiding this. This also a new reference to Chesterfield's letter to his son, which also generates a repeat and may need another look. Honandal2 (talk) 17:22, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

References

More citations

I have set up the Poole (1998) citation to use with template:sfn and converted a few uses of it. If you want to see how I did it for future reference, see the article history.

I noticed that there are two other Poole references, both seem to be to the same issue of the same journal, but the title is not the same: are they really the same but one of our editors was not so conscientious as the other? If so, let me know and I will combine them (it may be a bit messy because it involves archived copies) and convert them to sfn.

Reference 75 is now red because you removed the source pending administrator advice. It is not urgent to fix it but if you have another source that will suffice, please go ahead.

I will try to do the Letters to my son mañana. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:53, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: Many thanks for sorting out the Poole book references.

I am not sure which are the two other non matching Poole references. I assume these are to the Poole article I mentioned above: GIVE US OUR ELEVEN DAYS!": CALENDAR REFORM IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

ENGLAND. The ones I can see are references 55 and 70 and they look the same. Perhaps a correction has already been made? (NB: quoting reference numbers is dicey because they change if another references is inserted!)

Reference 75 gone red (now reference 78). This relates to an Inland Revenue website from 1999 about the 200th anniversary of the introduction of income tax. I downloaded a copy some time ago when I was working on my book but the website has since disappeared. I've spent some time searching for it including using the WayBack Machine (of archived websites) but could not find it. The WayBack machine is slow and doesn't find things for periods it claims to have. I have revised the footnote to include the relevant text and a note that it is no longer available and added another to link to the heading about the date of the Act.

I have revised reference 2 which had a request for a better source. I didn't insert the original. I have provided a link to the British History Online website which has a transcribed copy of the House of Lords Journal which records the date of Royal Assent. When I was working on my book I found a version which had images of the original but I couldn't find it again after a fairly quick search. Honandal2 (talk) 16:31, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

I managed to get into the Past and Present journal and found that they are indeed the same, so I have consolidated into a single 'Harvard' reference (and added Poole's research note that the Public Record Office has no record of any such events). I have done likewise with the 'letters'. I also found a website that had copied the HMRC 'explanation': I have suffixed a little editorial comment at the end of the citation, but I think you will agree? Other editors may not disagree of course and I would have to accept he comment being deleted.

IMO, transcribed versions are preferable because they are accessible to sight-impaired visitors, unlike the facsimile versions (but I have been surprised what a good fist Google makes of it. I highlight the section, I can't just copy it but I can ask for it to be translated (into English!) and copy the result. It occasionally misreads a long s as an f but mostly it is spot on.

AFIK, the only substantial issue that we still need to resolve is the extent to which the CoE was hoodwinked, willingly or otherwise. You were going to look in Poole (1998)? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:00, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: Thanks! I am impressed you found the IR quotation. I spent ages with no success. My doubt about your comment is that I think the item, like huge numbers of others, has simply been removed to avoid cluttering up the website with old stuff. I also think no one in HMRC knows or cares about the error. I see what you mean about transcribed versions. I like the original because there is no chance of transcription errors and I always like to see the actual original document. May be both can go in? I will look at the CoE issue later - too much other stuff to do, Honandal2 (talk) 17:23, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

It wasn't too difficult given that you had already done the spade work by providing the text. I searched for "the authorities decided to tack the missing days on at the end, which meant moving the beginning of the tax year from the 25 March" and then just had to avoid the sites that had copied Wikipedia. I was far more impressed by you finding a modern insurance cover case that rested on the word "from"! BTW, I appended a more neutral commentary: "[This explanation repeats the error made by Philips (1921), as described below in #Old explanation for 6 April tax year. It no longer appears on the HMRC website.]", which I trust won't offend anyone. I have also fixed Old Style and New Style dates with

Dr Robert Poole explains: "The twelve- rather than eleven-day discrepancy between the start of the old year (25 March) and that of the modern financial year (6 April) has caused puzzlement, [...] In fact, 25 March was first day of the [calendar] year but the last day of the financial quarter, corresponding to 5 April; the difference was thus exactly eleven days".

Note also an additional reply re Europe, above. That's me done! --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 00:13, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: I like what you've done with the Inland Revenue footnote.

Finding cases on "from" was relatively easy, I must confess. Halsbury's Laws of England (an expensive multi volume work) gives an extensive list beginning with a major family financial dispute involving the Duke of Leeds in 1777 and ending with an HM Revenue & Customs case in 2014 (where the Parliamentary draftsman of the Finance Act in question failed to follow the Office's own recommendation). Halsbury used to be available online in my local library but has gone following cuts. Other libraries still have the work.

I was slow dealing with the Easter "smuggling past" issue because I wasn't sure how to do it. I have had a go now and I hope I used the correct method. Honandal2 (talk) 11:32, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

References

Draft in your sandbox?

I am assuming that the ping to me from your sandbox is just 'collateral damage', that it is a draft for the article talk page and you aren't expecting a response yet (so I won't).

By the way, in an active conversation, you don't need to ping participants because you may assume that they are watching the article and the indenting (done by a series of colons) will make it clear what the response relates to and to whom. Sometimes you might want to respond to two editors in the same post: the technique to use in that case is template:U. If you would like to see an example, I used it this morning at Talk:Backslash#History.

Regards. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:31, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: Yes. Sorry. My ignorance. I assumed the sandbox was a private drafting space and did not realise that including a ping to you would actually reach you. Thanks for additional advice on technique. Honandal2 (talk) 12:42, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

I've been editing for about 13 years and it was the first time that I had ever seen it! (and I thought it was private-ish space too, but I suppose a few editors might want to collaborate on a draft and use one of their sandboxes to host it, so ability to ping would be useful. I guess if you wanted to have a ping in your draft but not have it it 'fire', you could nowiki it pro tem.) I was pretty sure that it was your own work-in-progress but thought it best to check with you just in case.

"Private-ish" because nothing on Wikipedia is private, it is all accessible, free to read, copy, reuse and change. (That is why it such a note trying to find something and all you get is click-bait copies of the article you are trying to correct.) --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:18, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

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Capturing the Calendar Act article as it was before I got the machete out

Should you want to keep a record of how the article was at is maximum, see this permanent link. In principle, that url should work forever but if you prefer, in the menu bar down the left hand side you will find the option to save as a PDF or as a printable copy. Alternatively, you can create user:Honandal2/Sandbox2 and just copy that version of the article over to it.

I really appreciate all the work you put into the Calendar article, it is light years better than it was before you started. The big problem with Wikipedia is knowing when to stop, it is so easy to end up writing another book! (and who knows, maybe it will inspire you to do just that). It may be that you can rescue some of the material to use in other articles. In one way it's a pity that I didn't find the History of taxation in the United Kingdom article earlier, it might have saved you some work – but on the other hand I really believe that the version you wrote after you went back to the drawing board really did make journey worth while. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:54, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Another draft in your sandbox

In case it doesn't alert you, I've added some more comments on your draft. Good work! I see that Wiktionary has the definition of Pocket book we need, so let's use that instead of a template. [I will change your draft accordingly now].

(BTW, your ping from your sandbox didn't alert me either time, so there must be an exception to allow people to test or draft without 'jumping the gun'. I just happened to look, so if you need to alert me again, you will need to ping me from here or leave a message on my talk page.) --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:42, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

I have applied the Google Books URL to the 'revised draft' as requested. As I noted there, your work so you should get the credit for it. Please copy and paste into main space. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 18:10, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Best wishes for the holidays

		Season's Greetings
		Wishing you and yours a Happy Holiday Season, and all best wishes for the New Year! Stonehenge at mid-winter sunrise is my Wiki-Solstice card to all for this year. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:57, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: Best wishes to you too! Keep dodging Covid. Honandal2 (talk) 15:59, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Calendar Act achieves GA standard

In case you miss it, I wanted to let you know that the article Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 has achieved WP:Good Article standard after an exacting review. Your contributions were a major factor in making it the comprehensive reference that it is today. Thank you. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:10, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: Thank you and sorry for the delay in replying. Well done getting the article approved. I appreciate your kind comments about my contribution. You, of course, contributed greatly to the article and, with endless patience, to my Wikipedia education. I was a little disappointed to discover that Wikipedia doesn't aim to be as comprehensive as I had assumed and, instead, seeks to avoid boring the reader with overly detailed articles. Nevertheless it is a useful resource and gives the reader a good start on any subject. I had drafted an excessively long and quote-filled contribution on the Land Tax but I have since deleted it because I now realise this isn't what is wanted. On a quick read of the Calendar Act article I found one possible tiny slip under the heading Title of the Act where there may be an unintended curly bracket reference visible after "The old long titles had proved increasingly inconvenient {{efn|". Honandal2 (talk) 11:02, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

No need to apologise, it was not time critical. I just wanted to acknowledge the major contributors. As I see it, I just did the sub-editor job, the'meat' of the article in terms of the in-depth research needed to identify the salient points, was contributed by editors like you.

I think maybe you overstate your criticism, though it certainly has merit. The formal guidance is at Wikipedia:Article size, but the essence is this: Wikipedia is not a book and is not subject to the limitations of a book: instead it can employ a sort of 'Russian doll' technique that allows readers to decide how deep they want to go and into which aspects. So a topic is covered in over-view first, then further articles go into more detail and those in turn may go into even greater detail. It is a bit like different textbooks aimed at GCSE, A-level, undergraduate, Masters and Doctorate. I'm disappointed that you gave up on the Land Tax article. You could have put an overview of it into the History of taxation in the United Kingdom and started a new article for the detail. (If you reconsider, it would be wise to read Wikipedia:Articles for creation to find out what you need to do.) I suspect that your biggest culture shock though is the prohibition on opinion and surmise and especially on original research: when writing an original history book, you would spend hours in the Public Records Office where you learn to 'read through the lines' and draw out the underlying message. Unfortunately, because of the number of conspiracy theorists and simply the number of poor historians who start with a conclusion and then cherry-pick evidence that confirms it, Wikipedia had to declare it off limits for everyone. Best regards and thank you again. I do hope to see you back. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:39, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out the typo at Title of the Act, that would have been embarrassing. (I am reasonably confident that the article will feature on the front page of Wikipedia on 25 March, in the section "Did you know?" (that, until the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 was passed, New Year's Day in England etc was the 25 March), so I expect a peak of readership (and criticism!) that day.) --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:51, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

1928 Act

@John Maynard Friedman: Following a message from DYKUpdateBot‬ I looked again at the Calendar Act article and a point struck me about the passage under Easter Act 1928. This is written in the past tense. I don't think I originally used the past tense because the Act remains in force. At any time an Order in Council could be issued to fix the date of Easter for the UK. This might happen if the Christian churches agree but the Act might need revision if the date selected isn't the one in the 1928 Act. Most Churches are apparently content for Easter to be fixed apart from the Eastern Orthodox. There is a Wikipedia article Reform of the Date of Easter. I would rewrite the section like this:

The Easter Act 1928 provides for the possibility of permanently fixing the date of Easter as the first Sunday after the second Saturday in April. An Order in Council is needed to to trigger the change and no such order has yet been made. If invoked, the 1928 Act would replace the table of "Moveable and Immoveable Feasts" in the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750. This Act has not yet come into force and the table has not changed.

The Wikipedia article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_of_the_date_of_Easter has more. Honandal2 (talk) 11:25, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

You could have just gone ahead and done it. I have revised as suggested, though I didn't copy/paste your text because I didn't think of that until after I had done it. I left it as "provided" since it was enacted over 90 years ago: by the same logic we should use the present tense for the 1750 Act since it remains in force. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:00, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: Thanks. I am reluctant to meddle with the drafting without consulting you because I regard you as the lead on the content and tone. Having got the article approved it would be a pity to mess it up. Personally I prefer "provides" rather than "provided" because the Act is still there giving the Council the option to fix the date. I would also not say the Act "never came into force" because that implies that it never could. I prefer the "If invoked" formula which I took from the previous draft. But I don't feel strongly. I don't propose to look at the tenses in the rest of the article! The opening paragraph of the article uses the present tense but there may be occasions when the past tense is appropriate. For example, the omission of 11 days has happened unlike the potential change of the date of Easter which can still happen. Honandal2 (talk) 14:35, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Yes, "never" is a bit colloquial. I'll look at it again. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:10, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

History of taxation

Apropos of nothing but you may be amused to learn that I found another article here with the "extra day added in 1800 to make 6 April" myth, complete with citation! (I corrected, with a link to your Why the British tax year etc text.)

It occurs to me that I may have overstated the "no original research" rule. Finding and citing material in the National Archives is entirely legitimate: the issue arises only when it comes to drawing an inference or synthesis from them. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:00, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

DYK for Calendar (New Style) Act 1750

On 25 March 2021, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Calendar (New Style) Act 1750, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that until the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 was passed, the new year began on 25 March in England, Wales, Ireland, and Britain's American colonies? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Calendar (New Style) Act 1750. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Calendar (New Style) Act 1750), and if they received a combined total of at least 416.7 views per hour (ie, 5,000 views in 12 hours or 10,000 in 24), the hook may be added to the statistics page. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Cwmhiraeth (talk) 00:02, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Counting 'from' a date

I've just come across an interesting article that might explain the strange (to modern eyes) use of 'from', that I thought might interest you? See Counting#Inclusive counting. I have added a note to History of taxation in the United Kingdom to draw attention to it. In your note about Coke, you write that the usage "may be much earlier". I know we can't speculate in main space but this method of counting would suggest an origin in Norman or at least Palace French. Compare French: quinzaine, a fortnight but literally fifteen. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 08:21, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: Thanks. This is interesting. It is helpful that the page in the book cited in the Counting article (164) is available online. However, this page says nothing about the origin of exclusive counting in England and at present we can only speculate. The book says the French used inclusive counting (but gives no authority) and so we don't know whether the Normans used a different method from other parts of France or whether they continued an Anglo Saxon tradition or, indeed, whether the practice developed independently after the Conquest. Perhaps there is a paper or book somewhere that has the answer. Given that the Counting article cites no specific authority for the English use of exclusive counting I am not sure that adding a link to the Taxation article helps much although it may interest readers. In might make more sense to add a link to the taxation article from the Counting article? Honandal2 (talk) 09:39, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

I got there from 'bisextile day' meaning leap day. That it turn comes from Roman Law, counting back six days from the Kalend (first) of March, So obviously: 28, 27, 26, 25, 24, 23... but the answer should be 24! It turns out that the Romans used "from" in the Coke sense - inclusive counting, yielding 1, 28, 27, 26, 25, 24 and thus gets the right answer. A citation for the Roman practice has been added to Leap year but it would take a lot more digging to find out for how long it was used, which I doubt that either of us is motivated to do.

The reason I put the note about inclusive counting into the taxation article was just so that readers might more readily accept that "from 25 March" does actually mean 'including that day', that it does have a generic basis in real custom and practice, that it is not something unique to English law that looks like a tax fiddle. I'm not convinced that it is appropriate to put a link to the tax article in the counting article, though: 'general to the particular' = good, 'particular to the general' = bad.

Good point about the lack of citations at the Counting article, I'll tag it 'citation needed'. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:15, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

This source https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_History_and_Practice_of_Ancient_Astr/LVp_gkwyvC8C?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA164 says that the practice changed in the C15. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 13:23, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

I have put a link in the Counting article back to the Coke discussion in the Taxation article. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:36, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: I have twice tried to reply but both times my text disappeared when I published. I will return tomorrow or later. Honandal2 (talk) 15:36, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

Odd, prob a gremlin. Before you do, would you check the change I made to counting, please, to ensure that I've got it right way round! --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:25, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: To answer your latest message first: I fear you have got it the wrong way round (as you also did in your earlier message). In English law a period from a date begins on the following day. Thus the Land Tax was charged for a year from 25 March and the period began on 26 March. That is, from is used in an exclusive sense. This was not just a legal formality because accounts were drawn up to end on the quarter days, including 25 March. This meant an account also began on the day following. Somewhere in the mists of time the legal and accounting conventions may be linked. Because in ordinary, non legal usage, there is no such precision about the meaning of from the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel recommends that alernative unambiguous formulations should be used.

The from practice is not, as you suggest, as tax fiddle. The legal rule applies generally, as can be seen in the majority of court cases on from which do not concern tax. As the Coke quotation indicates it is a matter of general law which can be traced to Sir Thomas Littleton's treatise on property law of 1481 (which presumably reflected earlier usage). There is one tax case where, contrary to policy, the draftsman caused a dispute by using from in a Finance Act time limit for a corporation tax enquiry notice so that the difference of one day was crucial: Dock and Let Ltd v Commissioners for HM Revenue & Customs: [2014] UKFTT 943.

You rightly say that the bissextile day is the leap day. I find it fascinating that the meaning of bissextile day has changed because the leap day has changed. After the Julian reform the Romans treated the leap day as a second sixth day before the Kalends of March. In Latin this is ante diem bis sextum Kalendas Martias. Here bis means you have the sixth day twice or again. By a legal fiction sixth and second sixth days were treated as one day. So, for example, a child born on the second sixth day before the Kalends of March in one year would have its first birthday on the sixth day before the Kalends of March in the following year. So Gilbertian confusion about a pirate born on leap day is impossible (The Pirates of Penzance)! English medieval law took notice of this intercalation history in the Statute De Anno et Die Bissextili of 1236 which was about how to count days for the purposes of a prosecution. My book discusses this in Chapters 3 and 7.

When you write consecutive day numbers against Roman dating the sixth day before the Kalends of March is opposite 24 February in a normal year and opposite 25 February in a leap year because the extra day was inserted before sixth day. The effect can be seen in the medieval treatment of the feast of St Matthias which was always celebrated on the sixth day before the Kalends of March. However, using modern consecutive dating the feast was on 24 February in a normal year and 25 February in a leap year.

Surprisingly it doesn't take much work to get some idea of how long the Roman system was in use. The Church naturally used the Roman system because it developed in the Roman Empire. The Roman usage by the Church continued for centuries into medieval times; for example, a Missal of 1498 only uses the Roman system (copy is in Appendix 8 of my book). In time, however, a dual system developed so that consecutive numbering appears alongside the Roman. For example, the Books of Common Prayer of 1549 and 1604 do this. In the 1549 Book the consecutive numbering uses Roman numerals while the 1604 uses Arabic (Appendices 10 and 11 of my book). Secular almanacks also used both systems; for example, John Harvey's of 1585 (reproduced in Appendix 16 of my book). The big change came with the 1662 edition of the Book of Common Prayer which used only the modern system with Arabic numbering and therefore probably cemented the modern practice in society (Appendix 13). It also ended the Roman method of identifying the leap day which now fell on 29 February. This led to an odd difference between Anglicans and Catholics in the day on which the feast of St Matthias was celebrated because the Catholics kept to the Roman method until 1969. A more difficult task would be to trace usage through the years in society at large although Samuel Pepys' Diaries used the simple modern system in the 1660s so I'd guess it was in general use by then.

Roman dating continued at least into the eighteenth century in some circles. A particularly relevant example in the present context is the 1750 Calendar Act. This uses both the Roman and the modern consecutive day counting systems in the calendar included in the Act. Honandal2 (talk) 14:18, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Aarghh! I had better rush back and correct now, and read your full explanation later. Thank you. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:42, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

citations requested at History of Taxation

Hi Alan,
I don't suppose you check in regularly so I thought that you might want to be alerted to some recent requests for supporting citations at the "Why does the tax year begin" section of History of taxation in the United Kingdom. (You may see a discussion about style at the article talk page, it would probably be best if you don't participate unless you are very familiar with the Manual of Style.)
Regards JMF
--John Maynard Friedman (talk) 21:39, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: Thanks. I don't check regularly these days. I will not join in the discussions. Honandal2 (talk) 16:29, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Now that I've had time to look at the requests, expecting them to be difficult and beyond by knowledge, in fact I found them to be really rather trivial and pedantic. I have resolved. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:20, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: Thanks again for dealing with this. I had a look at the discussion but have not commented. Honandal2 (talk) 10:24, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: I hope you are keeping clear of Covid; I am so far! I came across an extensive website created by the financial journalist Paul Lewis - amongst other things he is the presenter of the BBC Radio 4 programme Money Box. The site includes a pretty good explanation of the origin of the tax year which could be useful background. Towards the end of this he mentions my book. Do you think it would be helpful and/or appropriate to include a link to his explanation? The address of the Paul Lewis tax year account is:

https://paullewismoney.blogspot.com/2020/04/why-does-tax-year-really-begin-on-6.html

@Honandal2:, yes thanks, so far so good but I'm afraid by now it is a matter of when rather than whether and how 'tooled up' my immune system is at the time.

It is a bit annoying that he uses Blogspot, because (a) wp:BLOGS says that we shouldn't accept blogs as reliable and (b) Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources specifically rules it out. However, as m'learned friends like to say (according to Private Eye, so must be true) there is an exemption for Subject-matter experts. In his case, I suspect that would be a difficult argument to make; a simple test is this: would he ever be hired as an expert witness before the High Court – I don't think so. So I'm afraid we couldn't use it as a citation but I can't see that anyone would object to it going in External Links and will do so now. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:54, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: Many thanks. Your proposal is eminently reasonable, and thanks for implementing it too! Sorry I forgot to date my last note with the swung dashes. Honandal2 (talk) 14:50, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

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Old style or new style?

Hello Alan, I hope you are still contactable? Rereading History of taxation in the United Kingdom#Start of tax year, I stopped up short at this sentence:

• The Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 elided eleven days from September 1752 but, despite this elision, the tax year continued to run from 25 March until 1758 when Parliament added eleven days to the Window Tax year so that it began on 6 April. The Land Tax year never changed.

Do you know if that is 25 March NS? or OS? Either way it is rather emphatic statement to make without a citation?

Best regards. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 00:23, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: Hullo John! Good to hear from you and to find you are still working at improving the text. I’ve not done anything on the subject for a good while although recently I’ve been thinking about minor revisions to my book on the tax year. The method for replying to you has changed since I was last here and I hope you get this.

The short answer to your question is that after calendar reform came into operation any date will be, in principle, New Style. The Finance Act 2022 became law on 24 February 2022 and that date, obviously, is New Style although nobody bothers adding that qualification. Similarly any dates in a statute (or other document) immediately after calendar reform was operating ought to be New Style.

I say any date will be New Style in principle because there are stories of confusion. For example, some elderly clergymen got their registers of births, marriages and deaths in a mess because they did not understand the change.

I have started drafting a longer explanation but I need more time to research some aspects. I suspect it won't be easy to draft a short accurate explanation. Land Tax Acts are not available online except as very brief mentions and this may make citations difficult (my book has copies I photographed at the National Archives). I will get back to you in due course. Best wishes: Alan O'Brien! Honandal2 (talk) 16:09, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Thank you Alan. I only happened to notice because another editor changed the section title, which provoked me to re-read it. I have very eclectic interests so thought I had left this topic behind.

That was what I expected but wanted to be sure. I was just amazed that the landed gentry missed that one and then took so long to rectify it. So in FY1752/3 they paid a year's land tax for 354 days and in FY1757/8 they got 376 days. So evens in the long view but it took five years to "rectify the anomaly". Have I got that right? I plan to make it just an explanatory footnote but in any case simple arithmetic doesn't have to be supported by citation.

Did the sales or views of your book pick up any after being mentioned here? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:28, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

In the end, I decided to forgo the explanation and so avoid falling the Philip (1921) trap. Least said, soonest mended. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 20:42, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

The two taxes charged by the year are Land Tax (yielding 15% of Government revenue) and Window Tax (yielding 4% of Government revenue). The Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 applied to each differently. Most tax came from Customs and Excise charges.

Land Tax

Land Tax was re‑enacted every year until Pitt made the tax permanent in 1798. Land Tax legislation was lengthy (80 page or so) and I continue to be amazed that Parliament passed the whole thing every year. Perhaps it was down to politics: the tax was unpopular and it was hard to make it overtly permanent.

The debt relieving provisions of the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 did not apply to dates in acts passed subsequently. This includes the Land Tax Act 1752 which covers the period when eleven days were omitted from the calendar in September 1752. The 1752 Land Tax Act applied a rate of three shillings in the pound for the year from 25 March 1752:

“And it is hereby declared and enacted by the Authority aforesaid, That the Sum of One million four hundred ninety two thousand and ninety four Pounds, Seven Shillings and Three Pence . . . shall be raised, levied, and paid unto His Majesty within the Space of One year from the twenty fifth of March, One thousand seven hundred and fifty two . . . ”

Land Tax Acts did not define the year or specify when the year ended. All they did was set out the four quarterly due dates for paying the tax and the last of these dates would, normally, have been one year after the start of the year. And this is what the 1752 Act assumes, as the extract quoted above shows. Since, as I have argued, a period “from” 25 March 1752 actually begins on 26 March 1752, it is logical that the last due date would be 25 March 1753, if this was a normal year. And this is what the Act specifies for the fourth quarterly payment date:

“ . . . and the Sum of three hundred seventy three thousand one hundred twenty three Pounds, eleven Shillings, and nine Pence three farthings, for the last of the said quarterly Payments, on or before the Twenty fifth Day of March One thousand seven hundred and fifty three . . . ”

Remarkably the draftsman of this Act, and those instructing him, apparently paid no regard to calendar reform. The Act says nothing about it. Since eleven days were omitted in the middle of this tax year the instalments due after that time were all advanced by eleven days. That is, those due on the traditional quarter dates of 29 September 1752, 25 December 1752 and 25 March 1753. The due dates remained the same but they were now eleven days earlier. This tax year was only 354 days long: 365 less 11.

I doubt if this was a deliberate result. For over fifty years an annual Land Tax Act had been passed in the same terms (apart from changes in the rate) and perhaps the bureaucracy of the day ground on unthinkingly with the usual routine.

The fact that the Land Tax year from 25 March 1752 was effectively curtailed is confirmed by the Land Tax Act for the next year; that is, the year from 25 March 1753. This provides (using a rate of two shillings in the pound):

“And it is hereby declared and enacted by the Authority aforesaid, That the Sum of nine hundred ninety four thousand nine hundred seventy two Pounds and fourteen Shillings . . . shall be raised, levied, and paid unto His Majesty within the Space of One year from the twenty fifth of March, One thousand seven hundred and fifty three . . . ”

The due dates were the same as ever so that the last quarterly payment was due a year later; that is, on 25 March 1754.

I was startled by the reduction in the length of the 1752 year and the bringing forward of the due dates. So I spent a good deal of time searching the National Archives for papers discussing the issue. I found none. They may exist but I failed to find them. All I found was a note in the British Library amongst the papers of James West, an MP and one of the Secretaries of the Treasury at the time. This proposes legislating to impose a one off solution for Government measures by requiring a proportionate reduction for payments due on 29 September 1752. The note barely mentions tax. It is really only concerned with the bureaucratic problems for payments by the Government of interest, wages and salaries. The proposed legislation did not proceed but I found no discussion of the pros and cons.

Appendix 49 of my book contains images of a sample of the Land Tax records for 1751, 1752 and 1753 for the St Leonard’s Precinct in the Parish of Aldersgate Within (City of London). These usefully confirm there was no proportionate reduction of the 1752 charge but give no information about due dates. It would be helpful to find assessment notices to individual taxpayers for these crucial years but I haven’t found any. Possibly aristocratic archives for great houses may preserve examples but I have not pursued this angle. In any event the notices would not tell us what happened in practice, which may have varied from place to place.

I assumed there were bound to be ructions about paying tax early and I searched the newspapers of the day, many of which are online, for evidence. I found none but, again, it may exist but I failed to find it.

One possible explanation may lie in the practical administration of Land Tax. It was devolved to local Commissioners who were amateurs and who even in normal times may not have been overly punctilious in enforcing payment according to the statutory timetable. Even more leeway may have been allowed for the 1752 Act; but I don’t know!

Window Tax

Window Tax was a permanent tax which was revised from time to time. The Window Tax Act 1747 applied during the period of calendar reform and up to 1758 when the tax was recast. This is when we get the first mention of a year “from 5 April”. The Window Tax Act 1747 had the same quarterly due dates for payment as Land Tax.

The debt relieving rule in in the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 ought to apply to Window Tax so the same payment intervals should be preserved. There is some evidence that this happened but I haven’t found any papers in the archives. Section XI of the Window Tax Act 1758 said the last payment was due “on or before the fifth day of April yearly” but otherwise says nothing about the impact of calendar reform. The due date was “yearly” because the tax was permanent.

Another Window Tax reform in 1765 sets out due dates which it says are “the four most usual dates of payment” and those dates are all eleven days later than the traditional quarter days. The reference to “the four most usual dates of payments” implies that those dates are already in use.

What remains uncertain is what happened to the Window Tax for the year from 25 March 1752 and subsequent years. I think it is likely that the due dates were deferred by eleven days. Whether the tax year itself was changed is equally obscure. In a way the exact tax year was unimportant: it was the due dates which really mattered.

Hence it seems unlikely that taxpayers benefitted from a long year in 1758.

Revisions to Wikipedia article

I don’t know what kind of explanatory note you have in mind. A full explanation is long and, unfortunately, doesn’t answer all the questions.

You asked about sales of my book. These, I confess, are not extensive: a total of 16 “sales” of which 6 were the paper copy and 10 were of the free eBook. I have always made the eBook version free and the paper price is the minimum I can set (which is stiff because there are 660 pages of which the majority are the documentary appendices). Google Books has also included the work, without consulting me I may add, but I don’t mind. The Wikipedia reference didn’t make much difference! Honandal2 (talk) 15:12, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

When I started to write it, it became very clear very quickly that, as you say, "a full explanation is long and, unfortunately, doesn’t answer all the questions". So I just shuffled the text slightly to read

The Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 elided eleven days from September 1752 but, despite this elision, the Window Tax tax year continued to run "from" 25 March 1753 (NS) until April 1758 when Parliament moved the due date to 5 April. The Land Tax year never changed.

If anyone wants to spend ages trying to write a succinct statement, good luck to them. I'm beginning to think that maybe Philip took a deliberate shortcut!

I'm sorry your book didn't work out but at least you had the satisfaction of doing it. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 16:34, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Good choice. However, I think the amendment should perhaps be:

"The Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 elided eleven days from September 1752 but, despite this elision, the Window Tax tax year may have continued to run "from" 25 March 1753 (NS) until April 1758 when Parliament moved it to a year from 5 April. The Land Tax year never changed."

I never expected much from sales about this obscure topic so I'm not disappointed! Honandal2 (talk) 16:55, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Maynard Friedman|talk]])

References

(talk) Mea Culpa! Sorry to drag up the impact of the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 on land tax again but I find I misled myself and, worse, you. I foolishly relied on memory and got it wrong. I have since returned to the statute. The debt protection rule in section VI of Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 does apply to land tax for the year from 25 March 1752, contrary to the view I previously expressed, but not to later land tax acts.

Section VI protects, amongst other things, debts:

"which shall become payable by virtue of any act or acts of parliament now in force, or which shall be made before the said fourteenth day of September [1752], or the time of doing any matter or thing directed or required by any such act or acts of parliament to be done in relation thereto"

The first part of this extract about acts in force does not apply because the Land Tax Act for the year from 25 March 1752 certainly came into force after the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750. But what about the italicised extract? You have to establish when an act comes into force. You may remember from discussions on the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 that before 1793 an act was deemed to come into force on the first day of the Parliamentary Session in which it passed. See the Wikipedia article on the subject:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acts_of_Parliament_(Commencement)_Act_1793

The Land Tax Act for the year from 25 March 1752 is headed with the year 1752 and, like the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750, it passed during the Parliament which began on 10 November 1747. That Parliament was prorogued on a number of occasions and the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 passed during the fourth Session and was deemed to come into force when that Session began on 17 January 1750.

The land tax for the year from 25 March 1752 was passed during the same Parliament but during the fifth Session which began on 14 November 1751. Thus that land tax was deemed to come into force on 14 November 1751 which was after the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750. However, the 1752 Land Tax Act was made before the said fourteenth day of September [1752] and so qualifies for protection under section VI.

This means the land tax payments due on the old quarter days of 29 September 1752, 25 December 1752 and 25 March 1753 were all deferred by the 11 omitted days.

You can see the land tax details on page 321of the statute at:

https://archive.org/details/statutesatlarge67britgoog/page/n348/mode/1up?view=theater

The Session details are at the top of the page and the brief summary of the Land Tax Act for the year from 25 March 1752 is below at CAP III.

The same statute volume contains the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 at page 186 and the Session information is on page 140.

This solves one problem but only kicks the can down the road to the next year. Land tax for the year from 25 March 1753 came into force on 11 January 1753. The act passed in the same Parliament as the previous land tax act but this time during the sixth Session which began on 11 January 1753. See page 1 of the statute for the session and page 6 for the land tax act:

https://archive.org/details/statutesatlarge57britgoog/page/n49/mode/1up?view=theater

This means land tax for the year from 25 March 1753 came into force on 11 January 1753 which is after 14 September 1752 and is not protected by section VI. Hence the quarterly payment days for that year due on 24 June 1753, 29 September 1753 etc remained unchanged and were, in principle, advanced by the 11 omitted days. The same applies to subsequent years’ land tax Acts.

The mystery is what happened in practice. Did anyone notice? Was the 1753 tax actually paid earlier? Today interest is charged on late tax payments and so are penalties in some cases, as Mr Zahawi found. But this didn’t happen in the eighteenth century. If the local land tax commissioners didn’t press people too hard for payment the issue may have been fudged. I haven’t found any evidence about what happened despite searches in the archives and in contemporary newspapers and the surviving Parliamentary reports. I doubt whether this obscure background is worth including in the article. Honandal2 (talk) 11:57, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

No, interesting though it is, it is the sort of detail that belongs in "History of the Land Tax" or even "History of Tax Collecting" book, not the satellite view we are constrained to use in an encyclopedia. But maybe you could copy this over into talk:Land tax, headed something like "I tried to determine how the Land Tax was handled in the years 1748–1758. This is as much as I managed to find before deciding it would take more time than I can give. I'm leaving it here in case someone else fancies a challenge." Your call.

BTW, I hope you enjoyed my "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" in my addition to History of taxation in the United Kingdom of the Gilray cartoon that you chose as cover for your book. Very apposite. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 12:30, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

You may be right that the interaction of land tax with calendar reform belongs in the land tax article, perhaps with a cross reference here. Possibly it could go in the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 article as one of the consequences but I’d hesitate to mess with that.

Sometime ago I wrote a long contribution to the land tax article but I realised (or someone such as you pointed out!) that it was remote from the Wikipedia style. I ran out of steam and deleted it and put it into the Sandbox for some other researcher to mine if they wished. I may put something about the impact of calendar reform in the user land tax talk section.

I had not noticed the Gilray addition to the History of Taxation but I like it. I also like Gilray’s satire of the first Income Tax Act 1799 which is on the back cover of my book. The Government pamphlet of the day claimed it gave:

A plain, short, and easy Description of the different Clauses in the Income Tax so as to render it familiar to the meanest Capacity.

Quite insulting that meanest capacity! The cartoon shows poor old John Bull grappling with the pamphlet with the shade of William Pitt hovering overhead. Gilray's version of the pamphlet says with much exaggeration:

Clause 1. NB for a further explanation, see Clause 701. Clause 2 NB This Clause will be better understood by reading Clause 2053. Clause 3 NB This Clause has no connection with Clause 9075 &c &c.

You can see it here:

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=gilray+tax+cartoons&qpvt=gilray+tax+cartoons&form=IQFRML&first=1

Honandal2 (talk) 13:46, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

I have just inserted it (at History of taxation in the United Kingdom#Income tax. Thank you! --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 21:24, 26 January 2023 (UTC)