unknown composer dates

[steltz]

Is there a way to use question marks or hyphens for the part of a birth/death year that is unknown? At the moment, Leon Jacquet is listed as:

18 - 4 July 1898

If it weren't for the fact that the numbers are descending, it would read as "the 18th to the 4th of July, 1898". It certainly is a little confusing, and I had to think twice about what it meant.

I tried to do something like what WorldCat does, with either 18?? or 18-- but neither the question marks or hyphens shows up on the page even though they have been added.

Can this be made clearer?

[KGill]

It has to be done by changing the names of the fields in the template: instead of having the separate fields for year, month, and day, you'd rewrite the whole line as '|Birth Date=18??' (IIRC). Unlike the default ones, this field is interpreted by the template as just literal text to be displayed without parsing, so you can put in whatever.

[steltz]

That worked, thanks!