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Dates may be identified in the ancient text (consular years, olympiads, etc.), or in editorial discussion. The date element contains a date in any format. There are basically three contexts in which an expression might be tagged as a date in an EpiDoc file:

(Note: A year or regular date in the Gregorian calendar may simply be tagged as a date with no further information required from attribute values. If the date or span of dates is expressed in prose, in ancient terms, or in a different calendar, further information may be given using the following attributes.)

There are two groups of attributes which add information to the date element. The attributes 'value' and 'precision' express a single date, exactly or approximately, whereas 'notBefore', 'notAfter', and 'exact' define a span of possible dates within which the date in question may be located.

Date expressions should be given in the form recommended by ISO 8601:2000, i.e. 'yyyy-mm-dd'. This means that years below 1000 (either BCE or CE) need leading zeroes to make them up to four digits. (See examples below.) When a date is not known to the very day the shortened forms 'yyyy-mm' and 'yyyy' may be used. Dates BCE should be indicated by the placement of a minus sign (hyphen) before the date expression. (Unlike ISO 8601:2000 we do not assume the existance of a year zero in the Gregorian calendar, so 44 BCE is "-0044" not "-0043".)

There is also an additional attribute calendar, which may be used to express the non-regular dating system in the case of dates in the original text. Example values include: 'Attic', 'A.U.C.', 'Julian', 'Amphictionic', 'Macedonian', etc.

(Note: the difference between a single date within a span of possibilities (marked by the notBefore and notAfter attributes of date, as above) and an expression indicating a time period (such as the reign of an emperor). For the latter EpiDoc recommends the use of dateRange, as documented in the TEI Guidelines.)