AP Style Dates and Times

Formats the date and time of your posts and comments into Associated Press Style.

Author:Tom Chambers (profile at wordpress.org)
WordPress version required:2.5
WordPress version tested:2.9.2
Plugin version:2.1
Added to WordPress repository:27-01-2009
Last updated:03-03-2010
Warning! This plugin has not been updated in over 2 years. It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress.
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Plugin URI:http://www.rockmycar.net/ap-style-dates-and-t...
Total downloads:4 407
Active installs:80+
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This plugin changes the format of the dates and times of your posts and comments to match Associated Press Style. This is perfect for news and magazine sites running WordPress and for those blog writers with a penchant for style consistency.

Here's what it does:

  • Adds periods to "am" and "pm" so they become "a.m." and "p.m."
  • Removes extraneous zeros when the time is at the top of the hour. "1:00 p.m." becomes "1 p.m."
  • Changes "12:00 a.m." to "midnight" and "12:00 p.m." to "noon."
  • Correctly abbreviates months in the date to match AP Style rules. Those are: "Jan." "Feb." "March" "April" "May" "June" "July" "Aug." "Sept." "Oct." "Nov." "Dec."

Optional features:

  • If the post year is the same as the current year, you can set it to not print the year in the date output to adhere to AP Style rules.
  • If the date of the post is the same as the current date, you can set it too print "today" instead of the date. Technically that's not an AP Style rule, but a common newspaper style nonetheless.
  • You can have it capitalize the words "today," "noon" and "midnight."

Therefore, if your post was published at 1:13 in the afternoon on September 22, 2007, this plugin will make the time look like "1:13 p.m." and date look like "Sept. 22, 2007"