Marvel Cinematic Universe Wiki:Layout Guide/Timeline

This Layout Guide is an official guide as to how the Timeline articles should be written and structured. Feel free to discuss the Layout Guide on the talk page.

Purpose
Marvel Studios has never confirmed the exact date for each and every event portrayed in the different films, tv episodes, one-shots and comics that comprise the current canon of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As such, it is impossible to write a 100% canonical timeline with the official dates that Marvel Studios has provided.

In order to portray the most accurate timeline of the canonical events presented, some of the dates are calculated given its relative position to the dates that have been currently confirmed by Marvel, taking into account the different time references, the passage of time both on-screen and off-screen and other references given in complementary works, such as tie-in comics or artbooks. Therefore, a certain degree of conjecture is used to write the different dates in the most logical and faithful way to the events seen on-screem.

For that reason, it should not be considered as an official Marvel Studios timeline, as it portrays all events assigning the dates given their relative position in a floating timeline respect the rest of events portrayed in different canonical installments of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Formatting
Within one of the timeline pages, there are a few rules that must be taken into consideration:
 * Years must be written as ==Level 2 Headings==
 * Months must be written as ===Level 3 Headings===
 * Days must be written as ====Level 4 Headings====, and always in ordinal numbers.
 * Each event must be written in its own bullet point, therefore, different events, despite appearing in the same source, should appear in a different bullet point.
 * Events must be written in Present tense, and always from an in-universe perspective.

Choosing Dates

 * Once a date is provided in an official or canonical source, the date is considered to outrank other sources, except if the date is not consistent with the events provided in other canonical sources with the same importance (films or tv series).
 * Many live-actions films are considered to be set in "real time" or "present day". In that case, the events portrayed in the film are considered to begin the day the movie was first publicly released in the United States.
 * If specific dates are never provided, a calculation is done starting with a canonical date, and taking into consideration both references to the passage of time off-screen and visual clues to the passage on-screen.
 * Other events are given dates regarding their relative position to events with assigned or calculated dates, or matching similar real-world events.

Sourcing

 * The timeline must follow all the rules given in the Sourcing Policy, in this case, adding a reference to each individual event presented in a bullet point.
 * Links in the references must be formatted according to the rules provided in the Formatting Guide.