Design
Date & Author shows the publication date of an article and who wrote it. It’s a lightweight line of metadata, usually placed at the top of an article below the headline. Its main purpose is SEO: dates and author names help search engines understand how fresh content is and who wrote it. It also tells readers at a glance when the article was published and by whom.
Anatomy
Section titled “Anatomy”- Date & Author
- Date
- Author
A vertical bar separates the date from the author in the horizontal orientation. It appears only when there is an author.
When to use it
Section titled “When to use it”Use Date & Author when:
- The content is a news article, blog post or editorial piece where authorship and freshness matter.
- The article has a named author — a person or a defined editorial byline.
- SEO visibility for the content is a priority.
Avoid Date & Author when:
- The content is evergreen or has no clear single author, such as product, legal or static marketing pages.
- Space is very limited and the metadata isn’t relevant to the user’s task — inside a card preview, a shorter format such as a relative date is more appropriate.
When the author isn’t meant to be public, drop the author and keep the date. The component is optional: teams decide per content type whether to include it, but it’s recommended wherever SEO matters.
Properties
Section titled “Properties”Orientation
Horizontal (default) puts the date and author on one line, split by a vertical bar, and wraps when space runs out. Vertical stacks the author below the date, without the bar.
Show author
On by default. The author is a link to a page that lists all articles by that person. Without an author, the date stands on its own.
Content guidelines
Section titled “Content guidelines”- Use the market’s date format. The component takes whatever text it’s given; it doesn’t format the date.
- Name a person or a defined byline. Use the author’s full name, not a team or department.