Why do North Americans write dates the wrong way around?

[darkxshade]

I propose a new standard, lets get rid of months and just go by ddd/yyyy where ddd is the day of the year from 1-356/366. Today is 326/2009.

 

[Parasitic]

Why are non-North Americans so curious about why we are not exactly like them?

Because they are inherently less awesome and thus have developed a sense of hatred against the United States.

 

[PieIsAwesome]

Correction: Americans write dates the correct way. Being correct is inherently American. Everyone else writes dates the wrong way around.

 

[Aluvus]

The DTG is not meant to be used as a casual date notation.
It's for anything that needs coordination and specification, any kind of large event organized by people from all other, military activity, and other things. That's also why they include Zulu-time (UTC). Handy for anything that needs to begin to end specifically at a certain time on a certain date, and easy to write short and concise.
Do this NLT 221200ZNOV2009. Easy to see means complete actions prior to 1200UTC, November 22, 2009. Of which would be 0700 here in Ohio (when Standard Time is being used, 0800 when DST is in effect).

That does not change the fact that DTG is unnecessarily hard to read. Cramming everything together in no sane order whatsoever, with nothing to break it up visually, is dumb. Nothing about the DTG format is "easy to see".

Stupid: 221200ZNOV2009

Readable: 2009-11-22/12:00Z (adds 3 characters)

Or even: 2009-NOV-22/12:00Z (adds 4 characters)

Still tolerable: 22NOV2009/1200Z (adds 1 character)

The extra few characters (and change in the order) required are well worth it. All of these formats are still very concise, but much more readable.

 

[Parasitic]

I propose a new standard, lets get rid of months and just go by ddd/yyyy where ddd is the day of the year from 1-356/366. Today is 326/2009.

That's too complicated. I propose something similar: we write dates dddx/yyyy, where ddd = day of the year from 1 (Jan 1) to 365 (Dec 31); this will stay invariant. x can be either A or B, where A denotes Feb 28 and B denotes Feb 29.

So Feb 1, 2017 is 32/2017; Feb 28, 2008 is 59A/2008 and Feb 29, 2008 is 59B/2008.

 

[Riceninja]

another vote for stardate

 

[XZeroII]

why don't we just use metric time? Get rid of all this 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, 28-31 days in a month, 365.24 days in a year crap. One year should equal 1 unit. Divide that into 10 months. Divide that into 10 days. Divide that into 10 hours. Divide that into 10 minutes. Divide that into 10 seconds. etc...

Problem solved. The date is now a single number.

 

[fatpat268]

That's too complicated. I propose something similar: we write dates dddx/yyyy, where ddd = day of the year from 1 (Jan 1) to 365 (Dec 31); this will stay invariant. x can be either A or B, where A denotes Feb 28 and B denotes Feb 29.

So Feb 1, 2017 is 32/2017; Feb 28, 2008 is 59A/2008 and Feb 29, 2008 is 59B/2008.

Wouldn't Feb 29 be 60B/2008?

 

[marvdmartian]

I propose a new standard, lets get rid of months and just go by ddd/yyyy where ddd is the day of the year from 1-356/366. Today is 326/2009.

Actually, the military supply system uses the Julian date on most of their paperwork (or, at least, did waaaaay back when I was in!!). Similar idea, but you use the last digit of the year, followed by the 3-digit day of the year. January first of this year would've been 9001, December thirty-first will be 9365. Today (November 22nd, 2009) is 9326. This easily incorporates the leap years, by simply adding one to what every day would normally be, after the 29th of February.

OP, the reason why most people across the pond do the mm-dd-yyyy format is because we think of the date as November 22, 2009, not the 22nd of November, 2009 (which formats out to dd-mm-yyyy). When I was in the navy, it was common to do the dd-mm-yyyy format, but not required.

I guess the real question to this whole thread is why Europeans automatically think that their way of doing things is correct??

 

[hiromizu]

And the Earth, don't forget the Earth.

*faceplant*

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

November twenty second, two thousand nine
twenty second day of November two thousand nine

we don't have time to waste i guess

 

[sandorski]

Actually, the military supply system uses the Julian date on most of their paperwork (or, at least, did waaaaay back when I was in!!). Similar idea, but you use the last digit of the year, followed by the 3-digit day of the year. January first of this year would've been 9001, December thirty-first will be 9365. Today (November 22nd, 2009) is 9326. This easily incorporates the leap years, by simply adding one to what every day would normally be, after the 29th of February.

OP, the reason why most people across the pond do the mm-dd-yyyy format is because we think of the date as November 22, 2009, not the 22nd of November, 2009 (which formats out to dd-mm-yyyy). When I was in the navy, it was common to do the dd-mm-yyyy format, but not required.

I guess the real question to this whole thread is why Europeans automatically think that their way of doing things is correct??

That's really not the point and the OP isn't a European.

It's all about Logical Progression. Largest to Smallest or Smallest to Largest is more Logical than Middle to Smallest to Largest

 

[IronWing]

Use Unix time epoch, everything in seconds from Jan 1, 1970. What could be simpler? Maybe use hexadecimal just because?

 

[sandorski]

Use Unix time epoch, everything in seconds from Jan 1, 1970. What could be simpler? Maybe use hexadecimal just because?

I thought of this last night:: (Day*Pi)+(Month*Pi*2)+(Year)

Todays Date: 2147.16

Easy peasy:awe:

 

[SonnyDaze]

Mm/dd/yyyy

 

[biggestmuff]

Zulu DTG for the win.

Oh, and posting in a troll thread.

 

[nonameo]

I think there's a bunch of extraneous information in dates. We should just go by chronological landmarks. thanksgiving-2. I mean, who cares what year it really is? if you want to go back, you just say -2thanksgiving-2, 2 thanksgivings ago, 2 days before thanksgiving go ahead, 2thanksgiving-2

this even lets you give arbitrary times that don't have an exact date. 2meal+2h after 2 meals and 2 hours

 

[lokiju]

Q: Why does the USA do xyz?

A: Because.

 

[Patt]

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?

Not gonna read the thread, but Canada generally uses dd/mm/yyyy ...

 

[Abe Froman]

For the same reasons that our toilets flush the other direction. Because we can!

 

[her209]

Same reason why the US uses lbs, miles, gallons, etc.

 

[d4mo]

Because we rule the world.

/thread

True

 

[Mike Gayner]

Same reason why the US uses lbs, miles, gallons, etc.

So...because they're intractable morons?

PS: I can't believe this thread is still going. I'm gonna chalk that up as a win.

 

[PepePeru]

i blame the Coriolis effect

 

[olds]

So...because they're intractable morons?

PS: I can't believe this thread is still going. I'm gonna chalk that up as a win.

If it's so bad, feel free to leave. We wouldn't want you to suffer and cry yourself to sleep. I sure there's a sheep molester forum you can post to back home.