Why do North Americans write dates the wrong way around?

[zCypher]

A person originating or living in... let me think real hard... North America?

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winnar!

lol

 

[Q]

Because USA > anybody

 

[gorobei]

the order is arbitrary as long as everyone is familiar with whatever convention is being used.

how it came to be I don't know.


the logic of the order depends on which end of the paperwork chain you work with.

-if you only need to fill out a form, most of the time you only need to know the day. therefore dd/mm/yyyy is more relevant.

-if you need to filter through and file the forms, i suspect mm/dd is more useful. year being generally known can therefore be truncated mentally or put last.

-if you need to find something in the archives, yyyy/mm/dd is probably preferred. however since most boxes/cabinets/drawers are probably sorted by year, the first part of the category is already known so mm/dd is the only relevant part again.

 

[oiprocs]

We avoided the metric system for so long, the world gave up. Now we're changing other standards.

This thread has inspired me to write the date day-month-year.

 

[Ken g6]

Oops! Wrong thread. :$

 

[0roo0roo]

because when you list a bunch of dates most likely to sort importance or relevance within a year you start off by looking at the months.

rarely do you sort through dates by matching the day numbers the american system makes more sense.

 

[Schadenfroh]

As stated above, we write it that way because we say it that way.

unless you use yyyymmdd you have no reason to talk shit

Indeed, that is the most logical way of writing a date.

 

[Colt45]

because when you list a bunch of dates most likely to sort importance or relevance within a year you start off by looking at the months.

And if you look at the relevance within a month, you look at the days...

 

[Aluvus]

Because it matches the way we say and write unabbreviated dates - November 21, 2009.

Neither day-month-year nor month-day-year is any more logical than the other; they both make sense for different reasons, and they're both less ideal than other alternatives. ISO standard dates > *. 2009-11-21. Unambiguous and sortable.

I am an American, and am used to our date format. But I would still say it is a terrible way to format a date. Why is the least significant part of the date in the middle? It makes no sense at all. And of course many people drop the second comma in sentences like "On November 18, 2009, I took out the trash.", which then grates on me because I am a grammar Nazi.

In any event, yes, ISO-style dates are clearly superior. As an extra bonus, they are more portable across languages than dates that spell out the month (and of course if you use a number for the months, in other dates formats it is ambiguous which part of the date is the day and which the month, unless one is greater than 12... ugh).

i do it navy style

This format is decent enough if you use a 4-digit year (because 2-digit years are stupid) and one that I sometimes use (although, as stated above, it fails hard if the reader doesn't speak your language).

However, its bastard child the DOD date-time group is just ridiculous. The time is integrated into the day component for some reason, with no punctuation at all to make clear what is happening. I am convinced that the DTG format was invented as some sort of horrible joke. On the plus side, it does concisely provide the time zone.

 

[Aluvus]

because when you list a bunch of dates most likely to sort importance or relevance within a year you start off by looking at the months.

rarely do you sort through dates by matching the day numbers the american system makes more sense.

This is an argument for ISO-style dates, not for the stupid thing that we do.

 

[n7]

I really hate how there are frickin' three different ways it's done.

Confusing as crap since here, i see it every different way too, damnit.

yy-mm-dd?
Or is it mm-dd-yy?

Perhaps dd-mm-yy?

ARGHHHHHH D:

 

[0roo0roo]

This is an argument for ISO-style dates, not for the stupid thing that we do.

how so, sorting dates by day is unnecessary, its already on the calendar for one. calandars show one month at a time, because month is the most important unit in day to day organization, day is simply a detail. most common thing to narrow down when sorting stuff is to get the month right first to narrow stuff down. rarely do you have a stack of paper that extends to many years.

 

[QueBert]

FUCK other countries who use dd-mm-yyyy I'm an American and that shit throws me off. Earlier this year I saw a release date for a game I wanted. It said something like 03-10-2009, but I didn't realize the site was in some retarded other country. So I'm thinking the game's coming out March 10th! Nope it's coming out October 3rd. STUPID FUCKS!

 

[speg]

yyyymmdd for me here in Canada.

 

[waffleironhead]

Americans (and Canadians I think) write their dates month-day-year. It seems illogical to me - it doesn't follow order of granularity like most of the world (day-month-year). Why?

it actually should be yyyy/mm/dd/hh/mm/ss

it makes it easier to sort

 

[Aluvus]

how so, sorting dates by day is unnecessary, its already on the calendar for one. calandars show one month at a time, because month is the most important unit in day to day organization, day is simply a detail. most common thing to narrow down when sorting stuff is to get the month right first to narrow stuff down. rarely do you have a stack of paper that extends to many years.

Paper?

I routinely need to sort data or files that span multiple years. American dates fail at this. ISO dates work perfectly. This is a dumb reason to use American dates when ISO dates solve the same problem, much more completely.

Just because your life apparently revolves around the month, doesn't mean anyone else's does.

 

[SacrosanctFiend]

FUCK other countries who use dd-mm-yyyy I'm an American and that shit throws me off. Earlier this year I saw a release date for a game I wanted. It said something like 03-10-2009, but I didn't realize the site was in some retarded other country. So I'm thinking the game's coming out March 10th! Nope it's coming out October 3rd. STUPID FUCKS!

So says the antiracist.

 

[hiromizu]

Cuz we're America, the greatest country in the world, and the planet.

 

[GrumpyMan]

We also don't like Centigrade and the metric system, so there.

 

[Cattlegod]

they both suck ass
it should be year-month-day

 

[TwiceOver]

I guess it makes sense with the way I say it.

I don't say "The 23rd day of November Two Thousand Nine" 23/11/09

I would say "November 23rd two thousand nine" 11/23/09

I work with a lot of people from China so I have gotten used to reading it either way. I had to start checking who emails were from in order to be sure on some dates.

 

[SacrosanctFiend]

Screw all of you who think the year is 2009. It's 21平成.

 

[Newbian]

Because we want to and we can..

 

[destrekor]

i do it navy style

that sounds hot

btw, I do it that way too. And I call it Army style. Sometimes I'll be a little more correct and call it Military style.

21NOV2009, 21NOV09. Completely unambiguous, everyone knows what it means. Except anyone unfamiliar with the letter combination NOV, or SEP, or... MAY. That is why I do kind of like the Roman Numeral style, and as someone said, it seems that's a relatively common Slavic approach. Completely impossible to misinterpret what month a roman numeral represents, and helps distinguish it from the arabic numerals used for the day and year.

 

[2Xtreme21]

I mix up the letters and numbers to screw everybody up.

N201O29V0