# How to get informative blanks in date\_select?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-get-informative-blanks-in-date-select/155311>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [December 10, 2008, 1:43pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-get-informative-blanks-in-date-select/155311 "2008-12-10T13:43:53Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Martijn\_Vos](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/e8c25b/32.png) [@Martijn\_Vos](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Martijn_Vos)\
**Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 1:43pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/how-to-get-informative-blanks-in-date-select/155311/1 "2008-12-10T13:43:53Z")

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I want something really simple: I want a date\_select that has  
blanks (:include\_blanks works fine so far), but having an empty  
value in the select box on the webpage is ugly, so I want something  
more informative there, like “month” or “select a month” or something.

In other words:

Month January February March April May June July August September October November December

How do I do that? I can’t find any way to accomplish this in any  
docs nor in the source, yet it seems like a really obvious thing  
to want to do.

Martijn.