How to fix author and updated microformats

I read this thread and it seems straight forward enough, the problem is that my single.php has this:

<span class=”author vcard”> <?php printf( ‘ID, $authordata->user_nicename ) . ‘” title=”‘ . sprintf( __( ‘View all posts by %s’, ‘redline’ ), $authordata->display_name ) . ‘”>’ . get_the_author_link() . ‘‘ ) ?></span>

instead of this:

<?php the_author(); ?>

What should I do here? See this thread for more info: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/magazine-basic-google-webmasters-tools-missing-updated-missing-author

<?php the_date(); ?>

Is totally missing from my single.php file also…