Standardization
Rewriting values so that everything of one kind follows one format: every date year first, every phone number in the same pattern.
Standardizing changes how a value is written, not what it means. That makes it the safest kind of cleaning, and the one to do first.
Where it comes up
- Mixed date formatsOne column holds dates written in several different styles.
- Inconsistent category labelsA column meant to hold a few fixed values holds many spellings of them.
- Name variantsThe same person or organization appears under several spellings, orders, and abbreviations.
See also
- Canonical valueThe one agreed spelling for a thing that can be written several ways, such as VA for Virginia, virginia, and Va.
- NormalizationConverting values to a common form or scale. The word is used for text (one case, one spacing), for numbers (a common range), and for database design (removing repetition).
- ISO 8601The international standard for writing dates and times, year first: 2025-03-04 for the fourth of March 2025.