February 31

February 31, with regard to the modern Western (revised Gregorian) calendar, is an imaginary date. It is sometimes used for example purposes, to make it clear regardless of context that the information being presented is artificial and not real data. February 30 is sometimes used in the same manner, although there are other calendars that legitimately use February 30.

In this respect, these "dates" are similar to other clearly fictional data used for a similar purpose, such as "John Q. Public".

Uses

Examples of deliberate usage

*Cite web|url=http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/tut/tut12.html|title=Lesson 12: Address Footers and E-Mail Links|work=Writing HTML: A Tutorial for Creating Web Pages|author=Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction|publisher=Maricopa Community Colleges|year=2002|quote=sample web page / Page Title / Last Updated February 31, 1999|accessdate=2007-07-06 (usage as example data in instructional materials).
*Cite web|url=http://feb31.com|title=You are invited...|author=Feb31.com|quote=The world's first February 31 Party! ... When: On February 31, of course! The festivities will start at 12:61 PM...|accessdate=2007-07-06|year=publication date unspecified (usage as nonsense data in a domain name placeholder page).
*An episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour is entitled "The Thirty-First of February." David Wayne stars as a man who, under suspicion of murdering his wife, is intentionally being driven insane to make him confess. The process includes changing his desk calendar back repeatedly to February 4, the date of her death, and eventually changing it to the nonexistent February 31. [http://www.tv.com/the-alfred-hitchcock-hour/the-thirty-first-of-february/episode/135466/summary.html?tag=ep_list;ep_title;14]

ee also

*Metasyntactic variable