T H E
Y E A R - W E E K - D A Y
S Y S T E M

The dating and updating of the TRINPsite documents is done on the basis of a novel Year-Week-Day system, which is actually a 'Year-Week-Fixed Week Day' system. In this timekeeping system each day is represented by the following type of code consisting of three numbers: 12.34.5. Such a Y.W.D. code is shorter than those used in the traditional day-month-year and month-day-year systems, which need 4 instead of 3 digits to record the day of the year. While it is neither shorter nor longer than an alternative year-day system in which the days would be numbered from 1 to 366, it has, as will become clear, the great advantage of directly relating the day of the year not only to the week of the year but, more importantly, to the day of the week as well.

No other system of notation makes sense than one in which a larger unit consistently precedes a smaller unit in the way in which thousands come before hundreds and hundreds, in turn, before tens. Therefore, the first number in the Y.W.D. code refers to the largest unit of time used here, that is the year. This year number is not based on any religious ethnically, territorially or otherwise exclusivist calendar. Instead it is based on an event which is of international significance and recognized as real by all regardless of religious, nonreligious or political persuasion. Such an event is the end of the Second World War and provisionally (not ultimately!) year 1 is taken to be the first whole calendar year after the end of that global war. This site was started in the year 50 aSWW, that is, 50 years after the end of the Second World War.

The second number in the Y.W.D. code refers to the week of the year, and the third number to the day of the week, both in accordance with the global Quaternary Metric Calendar. This is a perpetual calendar in that the years are uniform in the correspondence of days of the week and dates. Moreover, it is transparently perpetual in that the day of the week is part of the date, and therefore immediately visible, at least when using the Year-Week-Day code. It is also possible to use a Year-Month-Day code in combination with the Metric Calendar, since each four-week period covers one month of exactly 28 days, with the exception of Equatorial Month in the middle of the year and, once every four years, Southern Late Lent at the end, which last 29 days.

For practical purposes, however, the use of weeks rather than months is to be preferred. Thus, the number of weeks (52) can be divided by 2 and 4 equal parts of the year, whereas the number of months is 13, a prime number. Furthermore, the Year-Month-Day code is one digit or character longer, if using the number of the month (01-13), and even two characters longer, if using the abbreviation for its name (NEY-SLL). It will be immediately clear in which month the date falls, but for the 8th to the 28th day of the month the day of the week is not as transparent as in the Y.W.D. code, altho fixed and still easy to find by subtracting 7, 14 or 21 days. In the document Go Global, Go Metric! you can see today's date both in the practical Y.W.D. and in the more formal Y.M.D. notation.

The Quaternary Metric Calendar was introduced in section 5.2.1 of the Book of Symbols of the Model of Neutral-Inclusivity in the 41st year aSWW. In that section it is also explained what defines the true and inclusive year 1. At the moment that year and the inauguration of the succeeding new era is still an event to be looked forward to.

• a global calendar worldwide • ethnically and otherwise inclusive • as metric and modern as the meter • as natural and ancient as nature • and transparently perpetual

Conversion between the new Metric Calendar and an old calendar such as the religious-imperial one is not a matter of exact one-to-one correspondence as in the case of the conversion between, for example, metric liters and imperial gallons. Thus, a religious-imperial leap year with 29 days in the second month or an ASWW leap year with 29 days in the thirteenth and last month will affect this correspondence, especially if these leap years are not made to coincide with each other. (They never coincide if leap years must be divisible by 4, but this is a requirement that need not be insisted upon for ASWW years, as the use of these years is provisional.) Moreover, the first day of the Metric Calendar will only be '22 December' on the religious-imperial calendar if that is indeed the first whole 24-hour day after the Northern winter solstice; otherwise the Metric New Year's day will fall earlier or later on that calendar. Nevertheless, the variation is not going to be more than one, or perhaps sometimes two days, and for the time being the following conversion table will be used for the week and day numbers:

In the above system every year has an extra day at the end of the second quarter, while only leap years have a (second) extra day at the end of the fourth and last quarter. In this way the intercalary extra day in a leap year does not affect the regular succession of days, of which the eight-day 26th week has become an integral and fixed part. In this way, too, the fixed extra day is now exactly in the middle of the year in Equatorial Month, so that at least in standard years the balance between Northern and Southern months is fully maintained. This is what both catenical neutrality and planetary inclusivity require.