Why do Americans format their dates this way!

Because instead of thinking hierarchically, they are thinking in terms of encoding their habitual long-form date sequence of February 3, 2015 – i.e. Month Day Year.

The Japanese do the MM/DD/YYYY too. And I really don’t understand why some countries do MM/DD/YYYY. It doesn’t make sense to me.

Edited: the Japanese don’t quite use MM/DD/YYYY, but YYYY/MM/DD, which is even stranger.

Only civilians make that mistake in the U.S.
The military usually uses DDMMYYYY (unless communicating with civilians.)
I also think it makes more sense to say last name first. But that would be a tough sell.

YYYYMMDD makes most sense to me. It allows for easy ranking of dates and easier data comparisons.

MMDDYYY makes the least amount of sense.

However… What do you expect of a country that measures distance in the amount of lengths of some dead guy’s feet.

That is holding on to a system for weight that has no decimal logic in it and uses thumbs to tell how tall they are?

I know an inch isn’t based on thumbs, but comes from uncia, or 1/12th. An inch (uncia) is 1/12th of a foot.

I believe @Zaku is closest in that it’s an attempt to keep the same format for the date whether it’s written longhand or merely as digits.

@josie Not in the Navy unless they changed it recently. The usual format for us was DD Mmm YY where the month used letters; today would be 25 Jun 15 rather than 25062015. I don’t think that changed when rolled over either as it’s pretty easy to tell whether a logbook was written in 2015 or 1914 just by how yellow and brittle the pages are.

I use YYMMDD when making file names on my computer so that files with the same name but a different date will sort by date eg team meeting 150625, team meeting 150613, team meeting 150605.

Otherwise I use DDMMYY because I’m British. Not because it makes sense (which it does). I spell colour like this because I am British. The U is redundant but I will not change.

Because we analog Americans prefer being able to celebrate Pi Day on March 14, as opposed to Approximate Pi Day on 22 July.

I’m American and dyslexic, I too have never understood this.

I get driven crazy by the DD/MM/YY !!
I want to know what month we are talking about first. At first glance it could be the 25th of any of 12 months.

ETA: Actually for any year other than the current one, it might be nice to have the
YY/MM/DD

Because Americans love a rebellion.

@whitenoise, yeah, none of the measurement systems make any sense… feet? really? I mean, I do use the American measurement for height (i.e. 5ft 2in), but that is a person’s height, however I get confused as to why I use it…
But the whole height thing would NOT sound good if we used metres.
(why does it say metres is spelt incorrectly?(spelt too??!!))
@Stinley I spell colour like that too, why not?
I am sorry if this doesn’t make an awful lot of sense, but it was hard to get the point across clearly

@IheartMypuppy I know, it’s perverse that Americans have their own spelling for a unit that they refuse to even use.

Boy do I feel silly. I clicked into this question because I thought it was about dating. It seemed to me that it was worded oddly.

I try not to get hung up on differences. We should celebrate quirkiness! I do try to accommodate differences between UK and US english here which is just about the only place I interact with non-british english speakers. For example recently I talked about my children doing Scouting because I know that this is the word that most people will understand. Only some of you would understand what I meant if I said my older daughter was a Girl Guide.

No clue. I get confused all the time. And because I’m never sure whether it’s MM DD YYYY or DD MM YYYY I’m never totally sure what date they’re talking about unless they specify each time, which they do not (as in 03/05/2015) .

@Here2_4 you could miss out on a date if you adhered to the wrong format.

Kind of like Gary P. Nunn perpetually looking for the English girl he promised he would meet on the the third floor. London Homesick Blues

Noooooooooo! Not that!

The WTC shitstorm occurred on the 9th of November…apparently.

@Mimishu1995 I use YYYY/MM/DD when I name some computer files, because it has “sort by name” also sort by the date in the name.

mm/dd/yy is conffusing. I have no idea why we do that.

I write it out when I can “June 26, 015” (or better yet 26 June 2015, clearly separating the numbers from the letters, but it baffles lots of people).

I vote for using Julian dates, it would end the confusion.

@jaytkay I worked for an international organisation and the house rule was to write dates out like that eg 3 June 2015. I have tended to stick to that, especially if confusion could occur (forms for my kids’ schools just get 03/06/15 because I know they will understand it). Context is key!

@Stinley I was never a Girl Guide, I gave up on Brownies after working for a few badges, it didn’t do much for me, I found it rather boring. Maybe even back then I found the Brown Owl/Tawny Owl thing all a bit much. But I have a good friend who absolutely loved Guides.