Definition
New Style refers to the system of date reckoning under the Gregorian calendar, as distinguished from the older Julian calendar system (Old Style). In legal and historical documents, the designation "N.S." (New Style) appearing after a date signals that the date is calculated according to the Gregorian calendar, in which the calendar year begins on January 1. The practical significance is computational: when England and its colonies adopted the Gregorian calendar by statute in 1750 (taking effect in 1752), eleven days were dropped from the calendar — September 2, 1752 was immediately followed by September 14, 1752 — and the legal new year was fixed at January 1 rather than March 25 (Lady Day), which had been the English legal year's start under the Julian system.
The term appears most often in legal documents, court records, and historical instruments to prevent ambiguity when a date falls in the period between January 1 and March 24 of any year before 1752, or when a pre-1752 date requires conversion for legal purposes.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The Gregorian calendar system; a dating system having January 1 as the New Year's Day.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): New Style referred to the Gregorian method of reckoning, contrasted with Old Style (Julian reckoning), and was understood in ordinary usage as the reformed calendar adopted across most of Europe after 1582.
The gap between common and legal usage here is one of stakes rather than meaning. In ordinary conversation, New Style is a historical curiosity. In legal research, it is a document-interpretation problem: misreading an Old Style date as a New Style date — or failing to recognize which system a document uses — can produce date errors of eleven days or, for January-through-March dates, an entire year. Legal instruments predating 1752 must be read with this distinction actively in mind.
Common Confusion
New Style / Old Style confusion arises most acutely for dates in the double-date period (January 1 through March 24) in years before 1752. Under Old Style reckoning, March 25 began the new year; under New Style, January 1 did. A document dated "February 10, 1735" under Old Style is actually February 10, 1736 under New Style reckoning. Historical legal instruments sometimes resolve this by dual-dating (e.g., "February 10, 1735/36"), but many do not. Researchers should not assume dual-dating was consistently applied.
New Style should not be confused with any reference to judicial style (caption formatting) or legislative drafting style, which are entirely unrelated uses of the word "style" in legal contexts.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a dating trap, not merely a historical footnote. Researchers working with English, colonial American, or early American legal records must apply calendar awareness to any document dated before September 14, 1752.
Specific navigational hazards:
First, colonial American records are inconsistent. Some colonies adopted New Style reckoning informally before the 1750 statute; others used Old Style rigorously; still others dual-dated. There is no uniform rule across colonies or even within a single colony's court records.
Second, probate and land records are especially vulnerable. A will dated in January or February of a pre-1752 year may post-date or pre-date related instruments by a full year depending on which calendar system the drafter used — a difference that can affect questions of valid execution, priority of conveyance, or intestacy.
Third, English court terms and legal year designations tracked the Old Style year. The legal Michaelmas, Hilary, Easter, and Trinity terms were tied to the Julian calendar and the March 25 new year. Researchers correlating term-of-court references with calendar dates must account for this.
Fourth, Scottish records follow a different trajectory. Scotland moved the legal new year to January 1 in 1600, well before England. A document originating in Scotland and one originating in England in the same January-to-March window may carry dates that appear contemporaneous but represent different years under their respective systems.
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry's cross-reference to "See NEW" signals that historical dictionaries treated this term as part of a paired concept (New Style / Old Style). Researchers should check both entries in any historical source.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary and Rapalje & Lawrence give identical substantive content: the Gregorian calendar was introduced into Great Britain in 1752, with September 3 reckoned as September 14. This is accurate as far as it goes. The operative statute was the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 (24 Geo. 2, c. 23).
What both historical dictionary entries omit is significant for legal researchers: neither addresses the double-date problem for January-through-March dates, neither mentions the earlier Scottish adoption, and neither flags the inconsistency of colonial American practice. The entries treat the reform as a clean, single-event transition, which it was not in practice. For legal documents, the eleven-day shift is only half the interpretive problem; the year-numbering question for winter dates is the other half, and it receives no treatment in either source.
Both sources also omit any guidance on how courts have handled date-ambiguity disputes arising from Old Style/New Style confusion, which is the operative legal question when such a document surfaces in litigation or probate proceedings.
Jurisdictional Note
The 1750 statute applied to England, Wales, and the British colonies. Scotland had already moved the new year to January 1 in 1600, though it retained the Julian calendar's day-count until 1752. After American independence, the United States continued with the Gregorian system as a practical matter, with no federal statute required. Researchers working with records from Catholic-majority European jurisdictions will encounter Gregorian dating much earlier — most of Catholic Europe adopted it in 1582 — making cross-jurisdictional document comparison in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries particularly complex.