Why is the American date format different?

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Because this is an American forum? :dunce:


errr....this is mostly about common sense. It doesn't take Einstein to realize that the American date format is out of order. Like, hello? day/month/year??? shorter to longest? this is a no-brainer imo.

If shorter to longest is the correct way to do it Ozzy, which format do you use?
 
lmbfo.

Wow, way to stick it to the man. That would have hit the British right where it hurt!
Kind of like throwing tea into the ocean?

"Great, now we have to drink coffee."
 
errr....this is mostly about common sense. It doesn't take Einstein to realize that the American date format is out of order. Like, hello? day/month/year??? shorter to longest? this is a no-brainer imo.

yeee thats my point too. Logically it should be DD/MM/YY just like someone said earlier about time being Hours/Minutes/Seconds. It wouldnt make sense having Minutes/Hours/Seconds, same should apply to the date imo. It even makes more sense business wise if databases are sorted Years/Months/Days not Months/Days/Years. I dont see a good enough reason why there is or should be a different format.
 
lmbfo.

Wow, way to stick it to the man. That would have hit the British right where it hurt!

Who the hell said it was it to do harm to the British?

Originally Posted by FoolKiller
Kind of like throwing tea into the ocean?

"Great, now we have to drink coffee."

I believe that did effect the British.
 
If shorter to longest is the correct way to do it Ozzy, which format do you use?
Because I work for an American company, I see myself forced to use the MM/DD/YYYY format, just so I don't create any confusion that may cause severe consequences. However, that does not mean I think it's the correct one.
 
For the sake of chronological numbering, yyyy-mm-dd makes the most sense and I think everyone should use this standard......along with the metric system. :D

I still want an agree button !.....
 
I believe that did effect the British.

It did indeed. That's why we call it the sea and not the ocean, you see - only one letter off :dopey:

I honestly don't know. Why do we spell colour with a U? Someone found they preffered it and everyone else followed, maybe.
 
I think the question might be. Why do they spell colour without a U?

Reps for anyone can find information on which spelling came first and in which country.
 
I think the question might be. Why do they spell colour without a U?

Reps for anyone can find information on which spelling came first and in which country.

"Spelling differences" redirects here. That phrase can also refer to the differences between standard Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian.
For guidelines on dialects and spelling in the English Language version of Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style.
American and British English spelling differences are one aspect of American and British English differences.

In the early 18th century, English spelling was not standardised. Different standards became noticeable after the publishing of influential dictionaries. Current British English spellings follow, for the most part, those of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (1755). Many of the now characteristic American English spellings were introduced, although often not created, by Noah Webster in his An American Dictionary of the English Language of 1828.

Webster was a strong proponent of spelling reform for reasons both philological and nationalistic. Many spelling changes proposed in the U.S. by Webster himself, and in the early 20th century by the Simplified Spelling Board, never caught on. Among the advocates of spelling reform in England, the influences of those who preferred the Norman (or Anglo-French) spellings of certain words proved decisive. Subsequent spelling adjustments in the UK had little effect on present-day U.S. spelling, and vice versa. While in many cases American English deviated in the 19th century from mainstream British spelling, on the other hand it has also often retained older forms.

The spelling systems of Commonwealth countries closely resemble the British system. In Canada, while most spelling is "British", many "American" spellings are also used. Detailed information on Canadian and Australian spelling is provided throughout the article.

This is from Wikipedia so take it for what it might be worth.
Since the british dictionary came first I think they won on this
 
Spelling and pronunciation
In a few cases, essentially the same word has a different spelling which reflects a different pronunciation. Commonwealth as United Kingdom except where noted.

UK U.S. Remarks
aluminium aluminum Aluminium is the international standard in the sciences (IUPAC). The American spelling is nonetheless used by many American scientists. The original name proposed for the element was "alumium", with the name "aluminum" being suggested later. The name "aluminium" was finally adopted to conform with the -ium ending of many elements.[1] Canada as U.S.
arse ass In vulgar senses "buttocks" ("anus"/"wretch"); unrelated sense "donkey" is ass in both. Both forms are found in Canada and Australia.
barmy balmy In sense "slightly insane", "crazy", "foolish",[2] which has limited currency in American English. Both forms originated in 19th century England from other senses: barmy meant "frothing [as of beer]"; balmy means "warm and soft [as of weather]".
behove behoove Canada has both. British form is more etymologically conservative (Old English behōfian → Middle English behove(n)).
carburettor carburetor The British pronunciation stresses the third syllable; the American stresses the first. Canada as U.S.
charivari shivaree, charivari In the U.S., where both terms are mainly regional,[3] charivari is however pronounced usually as shivaree, which is also found in Canada and Cornwall,[4] and is a corruption of the French word.
coupé coupe for a 2-door car; the horse-drawn carriage is coupé in both; unrelated "cup"/"bowl" is always coupe. In the U.S., the E is accented when used as a foreign word.
eyrie aerie Rhyme with weary and hairy respectively. Both spellings and pronunciations occur in the U.S.
fillet fillet, filet Meat or fish. Pronounced as in French in the U.S. if spelled filet (more common). Canada as U.S.
furore furor Furore is a late 18th-century Italian loan that replaced the Latinate form in the UK in the following century,[5] and is usually pronounced with a voiced e. Canada as U.S. Australia has both.
haulier hauler Haulage contractor; haulier is the older spelling.[6] In Canada, hauler prevails.
maths math Abbreviations of mathematics. Canada as U.S. and an increasing use of math in some Australian states due to U.S. influences, although maths still prevails in Australia. New Zealand uses maths.
moustache mustache In the U.S., according to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the American Heritage Dictionary, the British spelling is an also-ran, but the second-syllable stress pronunciation is a common variant.
mum(my) mom(my) Mother. Mom is sporadically regionally found in the UK (West Midlands English); some British dialects have mam,[7] and this is often used in Irish English. Canada has both. In the U.S. region of New England, especially in the case of the Boston accent, the British pronunciation of mum is often retained, while it is still spelt mom.
pernickety persnickety Persnickety is a late 19th-century North American alteration of the Scottish word pernickety.[8]
quin quint Abbreviations of quintuplet.
scallywag scalawag In the U.S. (where the word originated, as scalawag) scallywag is not unknown. By and large, Canada as U.S. and Australia as UK.[9]
s****** snicker According to major dictionaries, both forms can occur in both dialects, although s****** can cause offense in the U.S. due to the similarity to ******. In Canada s****** can have malicious connotations; in Australia s****** prevails, as in the UK.[10]
speciality specialty In British English the standard usage is speciality, but specialty occurs in the field of medicine,[11] and also as a legal term for a contract under seal. In Canada, specialty prevails; in Australia both are current.[12]
titbit tidbit Canada as U.S.


[edit] Latin-derived spellings

[edit] -our / -or
Most words ending in unstressed -our in the United Kingdom (e.g. colour, flavour, honour) end in -or in the U.S. (e.g. color, flavor, honor). Most words of this category derive from Latin non-agent nouns having nominative -or; the first such borrowings into English were from early Old French and the ending was -or or -ur.[13] After the Norman Conquest, the termination became -our in Anglo-French in an attempt to represent the Old French pronunciation of words ending in -or.[14] The -our ending was not only retained in English borrowings from Anglo-French, but also applied to earlier French borrowings.[15] After the Renaissance, some such borrowings from Latin were taken up with their original -or termination; many words once ending in -our (for example, chancellour and governour) now end in -or everywhere. Many words of the -our/-or group do not have a Latin counterpart; for example, armo(u)r, behavio(u)r, harbo(u)r, neighbo(u)r; also arbo(u)r in sense "shelter"; senses "tree" and "tool" are always arbor, a false cognate of the other word. Some 16th and early 17th century British scholars indeed insisted that -or be used for words of Latin origin and -our for French loans; but in many cases the etymology was not completely clear, and therefore some scholars advocated -or only and others -our only.[16]

As early as 1755 Dr Johnson settled on -our, while Webster's 1828 dictionary featured only -or and is generally given much of the credit for the adoption of this form in the U.S. By contrast, Johnson, unlike Webster, was not an advocate of spelling reform and for the most part simply recorded what he found. For example, documents [4] from the Old Bailey, the foremost court in London, support the view of the OED that by the 17th century "colour" was the settled spelling. Those English speakers who began to move across the Atlantic would have taken these habits with them and H L Mencken makes the point that, "honor appears in the Declaration of Independence, but it seems to have got there rather by accident than by design. In Jefferson’s original draft it is spelled honour. " [5] Examples such as color, flavor, behavior, harbor, or neighbor scarcely appear in the Old Bailey's court records from the 17th and 18th century, whereas examples of their -our counterparts are generally numbered in hundreds. One notable exception is honor: honor and honour were equally frequent down to the 17th century,[17] and Honor still is, in the UK, the normal spelling for a person's name.

Derivatives and inflected forms. In derivatives and inflected forms of the -our/or words, in British usage the u is kept before English suffixes that are freely attachable to English words (neighbourhood, humourless, savoury) and suffixes of Greek or Latin origin that have been naturalised (favourite, honourable, behaviourism); before Latin suffixes that are not freely attachable to English words, the u can be dropped (honorific, honorist, vigorous, humorous, laborious, invigorate), can be either dropped or retained (colo(u)ration, colo(u)rise), or can be retained (colourist).[18] In American usage, derivatives and inflected forms are built by simply adding the suffix in all environments (favorite, savory, etc.) since the u is absent to begin with.

Exceptions. American usage most often retains the u in the word glamour, which comes from Scots, not Latin or French; saviour is a common variant of savior in the U.S.; the name of the herb savory is thus spelled everywhere (although the probably related adjective savo(u)ry does have a u in the UK). The British spelling is very common for "honour" (and "favour") on wedding invitations in the United States.[19]

Commonwealth usage. Commonwealth countries normally follow British usage. In Canada -or endings are not uncommon, particularly in the Prairie Provinces, though they are rarer in Eastern Canada.[20] In Australia, -or terminations enjoyed some use in the 19th century, and now are sporadically found in some regions,[21] usually in local and regional newspapers, though -our is almost universal.

Sorry for the double post but thought this could add more debate!
 
Of course your going to say "Its hard for me to use M/D/Y so lets argue about it because were right" when you've used a different system all your life. I know the American number system is a bit flawed, but ask me to use the metric system, and ill have no idea. Same goes for Kmh and Mph, and so on and so on.

It's not like were pushing it on you guys, were just different. Nobody can really win the "were doing it the right way" battle because were all right in the end.
 
Of course your going to say "Its hard for me to use M/D/Y so lets argue about it because were right" when you've used a different system all your life. I know the American number system is a bit flawed, but ask me to use the metric system, and ill have no idea. Same goes for Kmh and Mph, and so on and so on.

It's not like were pushing it on you guys, were just different. Nobody can really win the "were doing it the right way" battle because were all right in the end.

We use miles/mph too...
 
But the canadians, people we deal with more, do. I'm sure that's what he was meaning.
 
Which makes no sense either.....

Anybody know what a "Stone" represents ?????

I find it quite weird that you guys use Mph. I always thought you used Kmh.

In the scheme of things Mph does seem quite weird, especially seeing that a mile is 3,256ft (I think thats right)

Ive never heard the word "Stone" used to refer to weight before. It does sound a bit primitive to me when you say it.
 
Yes, equal to 14 pounds. I weigh 11 stone 2 - or 156 pounds in your parlance. Or 71kg.

I always wondered how much it equaled to.

I found out it was a measure of weight from the movie "Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy", and its special features. I think Warwick Davis weighs 4-5 stone and the suit he wore in the movie weighed about 8-9 stone.
 
I find it quite weird that you guys use Mph. I always thought you used Kmh.

In the scheme of things Mph does seem quite weird, especially seeing that a mile is 3,256ft (I think thats right)

Ive never heard the word "Stone" used to refer to weight before. It does sound a bit primitive to me when you say it.

A mile is 5,280ft - 1,760 yards.

"Stone" is just a way of dividing up big numbers - no more. Plus it gives women a target for weight loss.
 
A mile is 5,280ft - 1,760 yards.

"Stone" is just a way of dividing up big numbers - no more. Plus it gives women a target for weight loss.

now i feel retarded. The number was in my head, but for some reason it came out as 3,260, lol
 
Now how easy is the metric system :)
1 km = 1000 meters
1 meter = 100 centimeters = 1000 millimeters
 
My car gets forty rods to the hog's head, and that's the way I likes it!!!
abe_simpson.gif
 
Oddly enough, even though most of the dates in the US are written MM/DD/YY, on some of the most important forms you'll fill out for the US, they use the rest-of-the-world format and go for DD/MM/YY!
Check it out next time you come back to the US from abroad, you'll have to use DD/MM/YY on your US Customs forms for example!

We did it because we wanted to be different, same thing with our math system.

Precisely, you can't say Maths properly either! :lol: :p
 
My car gets forty rods to the hog's head, and that's the way I likes it!!!
abe_simpson.gif


Ah, see, there's another difference. Your post made me laugh, but is shows that we measure fuel economy, distance per unit of fuel. Most Europeans measure fuel consumption, fuel used per given distance. So how many hog's head does it take to go a thousand rods?

Why measure consumption instead of economy? It makes a better comparison.

Q: which is the better improvement, getting a Ford Excursion up from 14 to 15 miles per gallon, or getting a Honda Civic up from 35 to 42 miles per gallon?

A: Neither. Both improvements reduce actual fuel use by the same amount, a bit under half a gallon less per 100 miles. Granted, the Civic still uses less fuel to go that 100 miles, but the reduction, and thus the fuel saving, is the same in both examples.

Why do we do it the way we do? Probably as simple as better mileage is a higher number (45 MPG is better than 22) while better consumption is a lower number (2.2 G/100miles is better than 4.5.) Who wants a system where better is smaller?
 
Now how easy is the metric system :)
1 km = 1000 meters
1 meter = 100 centimeters = 1000 millimeters

1 meter = 1 device for measuring things.
1 metre = 100 centimetres...

The UK is a funny old place for measurements, and I'm of an age where I can use multiple systems interchangeably.

In some respects, metric is superior - it allows for quicker calculations and determinations of scale - but you need to go up three factors before you can change units, and this can make it unwieldy.

For example... I'm 178cm tall. That's not actually an SI unit, so I'm 1.78 metres tall. My height has to be measured to hundredths of the unit used. Or I'm 5'10" - because a foot is only 12 inches, I can change units more often and save having really big or really small numbers for something so simple as my height.


Something I don't get about countries which use exclusively metric is how reluctant they are to change prefices. 1000km is 1Mm, but I've never seen it written as such...
 
The UK is a funny old place for measurements, and I'm of an age where I can use multiple systems interchangeably.
---
For example... I'm 178cm tall. That's not actually an SI unit, so I'm 1.78 metres tall. My height has to be measured to hundredths of the unit used. Or I'm 5'10"
When I was at school, we measured things in mm, cm, etc, but I have no idea how that equates to my height. I'm 6'3". No idea what that is in metres. All I know is that it's under 2, and now I know it's higher than 1.78 :D

But us Brits are weird anyway. We fill up our cars in litres, but measure fuel consumption in miles per gallon. :odd:
 
oops, i wrote metres in dutch, my mistake :)
And if you write 1Mm, it's hard to comprehend the distance, when you say 1000km, it's a lot easier.
(a couple of times back and forth through Belgium)

edit: @Daan: So your height is 1,9m (actually 190,4cm, but who cares about 4mm when you're talking about the height of a person)
 
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