Well being English and logical it would seem that day/month/year would be the most appropriate going from the smallest measure of time to the largest.
Poll: Dating...help me solve this problem
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Oh, callendar date format problems, I see. >.>
It's D/M/Y for most, so that is the standard. However, "It's cewl to be different".
Oh, callendar date format problems, I see. >.>
It's D/M/Y for most, so that is the standard. However, "It's cewl to be different".
Personally i always write it YYYY/MM/DD. There is a reason to this:
When you write the date in this fashion you can easily sort the fields chronologically by simply sorting based on characters. All entries are first sorted by Year then month and then by date.
I suspect this is why the US started using MM/DD so that at least for the year, everything can be sorted - although I have no idea why they didn't take this to its logical completion (yyyy/mm/dd).
I was born and raised in a Commonwealth nation and so I always say the date as "16th of march" and growing up i used DD/MM/YYYY but as I have explained, my current system makes sorting pictures, videos etc. much easier.
When you write the date in this fashion you can easily sort the fields chronologically by simply sorting based on characters. All entries are first sorted by Year then month and then by date.
I suspect this is why the US started using MM/DD so that at least for the year, everything can be sorted - although I have no idea why they didn't take this to its logical completion (yyyy/mm/dd).
I was born and raised in a Commonwealth nation and so I always say the date as "16th of march" and growing up i used DD/MM/YYYY but as I have explained, my current system makes sorting pictures, videos etc. much easier.
Helpful little diagram courtesy of wikipedia:
Blue represents countries that use DD/MM/YYYY
Red represents countries that use MM/DD/YYYY
Yellow represents countries that use YYYY/MM/DD
Green and brown represnt countries where two or more variations are used
*edit*
Whoops, sorry I stretched the forum
Blue represents countries that use DD/MM/YYYY
Red represents countries that use MM/DD/YYYY
Yellow represents countries that use YYYY/MM/DD
Green and brown represnt countries where two or more variations are used
*edit*
Whoops, sorry I stretched the forum
Conversation: "What is the date?" "March 13"
When giving a name to a file on a computer that must contain reference to the date you should ALWAYS start with Year then Month then Day in NUMBERS only or else it doesn't sort by file name correctly. 20100313myfile.txt or myfile20100313.txt is fine, but 03132010myfile.txt is wrong and you should be slapped if you do this.
As for everything else on a computer, as long as the computer can put it in proper chronological sequence, it can display it however it wants.
As for writing the date on paper: March 13, 2010 is fine. Most people are only looking for the Month and Day anyhow (at least in the US).
When giving a name to a file on a computer that must contain reference to the date you should ALWAYS start with Year then Month then Day in NUMBERS only or else it doesn't sort by file name correctly. 20100313myfile.txt or myfile20100313.txt is fine, but 03132010myfile.txt is wrong and you should be slapped if you do this.
As for everything else on a computer, as long as the computer can put it in proper chronological sequence, it can display it however it wants.
As for writing the date on paper: March 13, 2010 is fine. Most people are only looking for the Month and Day anyhow (at least in the US).
Well, given that American English is the only English that matters anymore, it should be our idioms and idiosyncrasies that dominate, shouldn't it?ShredHead said:
Please read that with a lighthearted tone.
Yes, I know, we've already discussed that the English used elsewhere is reflective of the different ordering convention
I bet George Washington would be proud that the nation he helped found still annoys Brits to this dayBaradiel said:
Really though, the un-american (read: anti-freedom) way of doing it makes more sense. I am American, but I'm also all for the metric system and some date rearranging (still iffy on the 24 hour clock...)
Actually, in a lot of cases America uses the "old" way of doing things and other countries have changed in the meanwhile--the larger the population, the more conservative they tend to be. Keep in mind that for a long time there wasn't standardized spelling or, really, standardized anything.Baradiel said:
I got used to using d/m/y in Germany, but people complained so I switched back. I don't think it matters, ultimately. You write it in such a way that you'll understand it and other people likely to read it will understand it. If it's really freakin' important, just stop being a lazy ass and write the whole thing out.
Ah but I can turn that on its head by saying "16th of the 3rd 2010"Seldon2639 said:
Silly Americans! But seriously there should be some kind of standards, otherwise its quite confusing some of the time. (e.g. 3/2/10 - is that the 2nd of March or the 3rd of Feb?)