How should the date be expressed, dd/mm/yyyy or mm/dd/yyyy?
Being British I’m used to dd/mm/yyyy but it also makes more logical sense to me.
Is there an international standard? It would be a bit embarrassing for the UN if half the people turned up for a meeting on the 6th of May and the rest thought it was on the 5th of June
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I prefer mm/dd/yyyy because that’s how I say it. Today is September 11, 2009. 09/11/2009. Makes sense to me. Neither one is “right”; it’s just what you’re used to.
But yeah, what the above guy said about the standard. :P
Any form that I’ve filled out that way is month, date, year.
Strunk and White taught me that the best and clearest way is thus: 11 September 2009
Numbers are separated by a word, and it’s very clear which is the day and which is the year.
Here it’s typically MM/DD/YYYY. Which makes sense as you SAY it, at least here in the US, people tend to say “Let’s meet on May 6th” not “Let’s meet on the 6th of may”.
This way, 287 days of the year, you see the numbers go from smallest to largest.
Whenever possible, though (outside of legal documents) I write out the month so there is no confusion there.
When clarity is critical in an international audience, I second @Zen‘s suggestion.
If the world standard were to be built around my preference, it would be dd/mm/yyyy.
I prefer date/month/year. It makes more sense to me to know what the date is first. Unless I’m Rip Van Winkle (or Rob Van Winkle, amirite?), I pretty much know what month and year it is at any given time. But the date is something that is occasionally elusive to me.
Lazy fucks.
010100110110010101110000011101000110010101101101011000100110010101110010
001000000011000100110001001011000010000000110010001100000011000000111001
@Sarcasm here people tend to say the 6th of May.
Do we express time different too, I’ve heard Americans say “It’s Six Forty Five (6:45)” whereas here we would say “It’s quarter to Seven” or do you guys use that too?
@RareDenver
We say both. I never say “quarter to” anything, but my parents say it all the time and so do plenty of other people. If someone asks me the time, I give them the exact number. It’s 7:12, not about 7:10 or about 7:15. For me.
@RareDenver i use quarter til/past, half past and so on.
in Russian you can say “6 without 15” meaning 5:45, or “half 6” meaning 5:30. the latter one i think is also used in british english.
@eponymoushipster Half 6 would be 6:30 in Britain, it’s just short for half past 6, we express minutes upto and including 30 as past, i.e quarter past and over 30 as to
does anyone here say “its quarter of six” meaning its 5:45?
@RareDenver People here would say “Six forty five” or “Quarter to seven”. My father does the latter a lot, I prefer the former.
@eponymoushipster German is similar to that. You could say “Halb sieben” meaning “Halfway to seven”
It just matters where you live. I think the US is actually one of the few countries that uses mm/dd/yy. US military tends to use dd/mm/yy just to make it confusing, you have to read the document. When writing out the month it is better to put the day first I think. 12 January 2009. Separates the numbers so it is easier to understand and read.
@patg7590 I say quarter of.
Do you prefer to start the calendar week with Sunday or Monday?
@patg7590 Yes, I say the quarter thing all the time. For both the before & after the hour.
I say “quarter after”, “half past (hour)” or ”(hour)-thirty” and “quarter to”.
I think the states is one of the few places that starts the week with Sunday. Just another thing, like not using military time, except for the military itself, and not adopting the metric system, and the mm/dd/yy thing. Interesting.
As long as it is expressed clearly there is no problem. When asked “what is the date?” many people will respond “it is the fifteenth” or similar. Most people are already aware of the day of the week and the month, but can lose track of the day of the month. For that reason I like the British manner of expression dd/mm/yyyy. As for time I always give the hour followed by the minutes, “05:59” etc., as it the most precise method.
@DominicX- You’ve never owned an analog watch, have you?
For a file naming convention I prefer yyyy-mm-dd because it will always sort in order, even going from December 31st, 2009 (2009–12-31) to January 1st, 2010 (2010–01-01)
EDIT: D’oh! Just realized this is the International Standard mentioned above…
They don’t know what they’re missing.
As you may have realised by now, there’s the US way, and the UK way. As long as we know who we’re dealing with, we can figure it out. Of course it can be confusing when I go on a site and see a date such as 05–03-09 (which would actually be the 3rd of May in most cases, since most sites are American), but even more confusing when an American visits a site based in the UK, written in English (obviously) that says the new product is coming out on 01–12-09, meaning the 1st of December, but the American will be thinking why the hell it’s not available yet if it’s been around since the 12th of January?
Obviously the European one makes more sense, but whatever people are used to is always easier for them. Or you can just mention the month by name and be sure (Dec 1st is just as clear as 1st Dec for everyone).
@Jack79 stated when I go on a site and see a date such as 05–03–09 (which would actually be the 3rd of May in most cases, since most sites are American)
Can anyone provide some statistics that indicate that most sites are American because quite frankly I’m a little sceptical about this claim.
there are many more americans than brits online to start with. The internet started in america and has had more time to evolve. I think the last statistic I heard was that something like 40% of all sites worldwide are american, with britain under 8%. But I might remember wrong.
Okay so 40% of all sites are American, meaning 60% of all sites are not. America as a single country might have the largest share of sites but that is not the same as saying most sites are American as that would suggest that more than 50% of sites were American.
I know I’m nit picking but I’ve had a few drinks and that makes me nit picky.
ps I don’t have nits BTW
But, 40% is staggering. I know we have a very big populations, but still a large number when you consider how many countries are out there. I used to work for a multinational company and when scheduling meetings, if we were unable to use the meeting maker thingy on Outlook, I always spelled out the month and followed the time with the correct time zone acronym. It got tricky sometimes, especially coordinating US, Europe and Asia.
@JLeslie 40% is staggering I agree, but I would still like to see something that supported this claim
What percantage of the world population is the US. I can’t remember how many people are in the world now? Maybe 7B? The US is 300M. So is that 4%? I swear I can’t do math anymore.
@JLeslie I think a more relevant number would be population of internet users in the world/the US.
@Sarcasm makes a good point, maybe we should just consider the ‘online community’ then the USA might win out but I hear your broadband speeds suck?
Unix tells me it’s 1252933200. The stardate converter tells me it’s -313297.15
Well, 5 days ago the format didn’t make any difference. Today it would be unique either way. We should be worried about 4 days ago. September 10 or 9 October?
If you want to sort jpg files it makes sense to use the format yyyy/mm/dd
@mattbrowne, I’ll see that and raise you with a suggestion that sorting any files by name makes the most sense to use the yyy/mm/dd-style format (when you cannot rely on the datetime stamp of the file itself for some reason).
@mattbrowne I used to date invoices on my computer that way when I hired lighting out, definitely the best format for a computer.
@Jack79 oh and FYI the internet was started in France by a British guy
I say a quarter to six, and six fifteen.
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