Why is the American date format different?

[Slick Rick]

The normal date format is 'Day/Month/Year' but the American date format is 'Month/Day/Year' Why is this? Doesnt make any sense to me, its annoying having to switch between the two formats...

 

[Silverzone]

I don't know why, but I'm so used to m/d/y, when I see the other format I get confused.

 

[Sage]

en.wikipedia.org/…Middle_endian_forms…

Summary: assuming that section is factually accurate, it’s your guys’ fault.

Personally, I always write my dates like this so that there’s never any confusion:

7 June 2007
9 Oct 2009

 

[FoolKiller]

You get confused? One of my managers is British and he wants everything in D/M/Y and then everyone else wants M/D/Y.


I think Americans do M/D/Y because you would say it June 7th, 2007. It isn't common for Americans to refer to dates as the 7th of June, 2007.

 

[opelgt1969]

The normal date format is 'Day/Month/Year' but the American date format is 'Month/Day/Year' Why is this? Doesnt make any sense to me, its annoying having to switch between the two formats...

Look at it from a business that keeps records for years and years. You keep records year to year,it's easier if the month is at the first of these records then day of month second then year third.You go to find an old file (record) you have 12 months, 28,29,30,and 31 days. So you look for the month first then date.

 

[Car-less]

From a business point of view, year/month/day would make the most sense.
Personally I find the 'Month/Day/Year' format about as confusing as expressing time in Minutes/Seconds/Hours.

 

[Barracuda]

It all matters on what you learned to write. Of course if you've wrote it day/month/year (which i find quite confusing) all of your life, your going to find that our month/day/year system is confusing.

 

[TopHat]

Yet our nations birthday is always Day/Month/Year....

Yay for the 4th of July!

 

[Blake]

I’m happy using dd-mm-yyyy and yyyy-mm-dd. There’s no confusion, there. mm-dd-yyyy just seems bizarre. When it’s a date like today, 06-08-2007 would completely screw with my head. I wouldn’t for a second think of it being in June.

As Sage said, writing out the month in letters just makes sense when dealing with an international audience.

 

[Wolfe]

MM/DD makes more sense to me because while looking through a calendar, you have to flip to the correct month before being able to pinpoint the correct date. I think of dates like that in my head, too. The year belongs at the end in either case simply because in day-to-day activities, it isn't as relevant.

On the other hand, sequential things (like project labels or something) should be listed in yyyy/mm/dd, to maintain numerical order.

 

[Sureboss]

You get confused? One of my managers is British and he wants everything in D/M/Y and then everyone else wants M/D/Y.


I think Americans do M/D/Y because you would say it June 7th, 2007. It isn't common for Americans to refer to dates as the 7th of June, 2007.

Well if you spoke the language properly

 

[wfooshee]

I always have to think about the dates of replays in GT4, is the May 6th, or June 5th? I keep having to look for one that's higher than 12 and see which field it is.

Yet our nations birthday is always Day/Month/Year....

Yay for the 4th of July!

July 4, 1776. Says so right at the top of the document!!!

The normal date format is 'Day/Month/Year' but the American date format is 'Month/Day/Year' Why is this? Doesnt make any sense to me, its annoying having to switch between the two formats...

Who says that's normal?!!? Who says we're the ones backwards??!?!?

You get confused? One of my managers is British and he wants everything in D/M/Y and then everyone else wants M/D/Y.


I think Americans do M/D/Y because you would say it June 7th, 2007. It isn't common for Americans to refer to dates as the 7th of June, 2007.

Unless you're military, then it's 7 June 2007. OK, so it IS confusing.

 

[Barracuda]

Who says that's normal?!!? Who says we're the ones backwards??!?!?

Thank you 👍

 

[TheCracker]

Who says that's normal?!!? Who says we're the ones backwards??!?!?

The rest of the known* world with the exception of the Philippines and the Federated States of Micronesia.




*no one has ever heard of 'Palau'

 

[Flerbizky]

I always have to think about the dates of replays in GT4, is the May 6th, or June 5th? I keep having to look for one that's higher than 12 and see which field it is.



July 4, 1776. Says so right at the top of the document!!!



Who says that's normal?!!? Who says we're the ones backwards??!?!?

Hmmm.. Age of the US - 400+ years... Age of Europe (Greece / Rome era included) 4000+ years.... We have ultimate seniority !...

Though, for me, YYYY/MM/DD makes a lot more sense...

 

[Famine]

One thing I don't get is the out-loud pronunciation of dates in the US - and it has started to creep into the UK too.

7/7/07 would be the 7th of July anywhere. In the UK it's "July the seventh" or "the seventh of July". In the US it's "July seventh" or, as commonly, "July seven". Cinema ("theater") trailers are a good example of this - "Coming July Seven!". And yet you celebrate "the fourth of July"...

 

[Barracuda]

what the hell is wrong with saying July seventh?

I say to hell with you stuck up Europeans, always thinking your better than everybody.

Im joking of course

 

[Flerbizky]

what the hell is wrong with saying July seventh?

I say to hell with you stuck up Europeans, always thinking your better than everybody.

What makes you think it's just something we think ? ;-)

 

[Car-less]

Taking the six common units of time, and putting them in sequence using font size for emphasis we could have;

Second:Minute:Hour:Day:Month:Year

or

Year:Month:Day:Hour:Minute:Second

From a historical point of view the first example is often used, i.e. 'the eighth day of the sixth month in the year of our lord 2007'. From a business point of view the second would make retrieving records much easier, '2007/06/08' so both of these would be correct.
The European date format fits with the first sequence, D:M:Y,
whereas the American format M:D:Y is out of sequence.
This makes it the more confusing, though not as bad as D:Y:M
that I'm sure some confused individual somewhere uses.

Now I'm not saying that the American format is wrong, only that it has the potential for more confusion, and I'm not saying that Europeans always get it right - I have an appointment booked for 14:30 on the 13th July - H:M:D:M

 

[Scaff]

And its exactly this confusion that led to the use of Julian Dating for most computer applications, with today 8th June 2007 also being 2454260.

Julian dates get around a huge number of problems surrounding both the calculation of date based info and acceptable formats (which in most systems is just a GUI display format that's converted from the Julian date).


Regards

Scaff

 

[OZZYGT]

Im joking of course

lmao @ the mercy call.

 

[FoolKiller]

Cinema ("theater") trailers are a good example of this - "Coming July Seven!".

How it is pronounced is all determined by marketing. Take Transformers for example. It is coming out on the Fourth of July (I will address this holiday below). But the poster looks much cooler with 7-4-7. I have even heard them say "Coming 7-4-7." Independence Day also came out on a Fourth of July, but they emphasized the Fourth of July, because it fit better with the movie theme. How it is said (I hear July 7th, July seven, and 7th of July formats on any given ad) depends more on the marketing team, advertising design, and I have even seen it change based on where it is being advertised for. The upcoming Harry Potter movie has different (yet the same) ads for the UK and the US. The US version shows the release date as both July 13th at one point and then July 13 at another.

And yet you celebrate "the fourth of July"...

Correction. We celebrate The Fourth of July. Notice, all caps, making it a title (albeit unofficial - the official being Independence Day). We will sometimes shorten the name for ease and just say The Fourth. The Fourth of July happens to fall on July 4th.

whereas the American format M:D:Y is out of sequence.

But when written it is not July 7th 2007. It is July 7th, 2007. Note the comma. Much as organizational uses for names will use last name, first name or in a title like Fountainhead, The. This places the most commonly searched part in the front, thus avoiding confusion when in alphabetical order. When filing forms here at work it is usually a drawer for each year and then they are organized by month, and then by day. Since the year is already sorted by the cabinet I need to see the month up front.

I don't know where it came from, but it definitely makes sense for filing purposes. At work our file naming convention is [report name] - [date] and I know all my computer files for my British manager get sorted badly by Windows because the day is first. The American style of dating files allows Windows to sort by name, causing file types to be grouped together, and sorted by date. The British convention causes all the firsts to be sorted together, the seconds together, and so forth. I have to create separate folders for each month to keep them organized.

Now, when you start throwing in dashes or slashes, like 7/7/07, then the month first doesn't make sense but since everything else uses month first we just write it numerically the same way.

 

[Duke]

Well, when I'm writing some date I do it as Sage does, because it satisfies my desire to have the progression to be logical while avoiding the ambiguity of which number (<=12) is the day and which is the date.

For my computer files with similar names (such as repeated memos to the same person) I'd append "_20070608" after the title for a document I created on 08 June 2007. This allows me to sort by name so that all memos to a given person are grouped together in order of when they were written.

 

[Famine]

How it is pronounced is all determined by marketing.

Nevertheless, it seems a peculiarly American pastime to drop the "the".

 

[Loon]

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

 

[Pako]

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.

 

[OZZYGT]

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

Ohh wow, of course, 'cause it's soooo cool to be different than everybody else right? Yeah, I mean, forget any possible future mistakes in some company just because of the stupid date format. WE'RE DIFFERENT, TAKE THAT.

If you're different than EVERYBODY ELSE IN THE WORLD. Maybe there's something wrong?

 

[Loon]

Ohh wow, of course, 'cause it's soooo cool to be different than everybody else right? Yeah, I mean, forget any possible future mistakes in some company just because of the stupid date format. WE'RE DIFFERENT, TAKE THAT.

If you're different than EVERYBODY ELSE IN THE WORLD. Maybe there's something wrong?

Take it easy bud, my post was about 80% sarcasm.

But maybe the people who set up this country didn't want to be like their British cousins, they fought a war to get away from their ways, maybe they decided to setup their own date format so they would be completey unconnected to the british?

 

[opelgt1969]

Just for fun take a look at some of the older post under other topics and notice that the "Date " at the top will say Month/Day/Year. Also just a question here when you write a check what is your format for the date. Mine is MM-DD-YY. This question as to who is right will never be answered because we're all (or some of us ) are "Human Beings" and because of that we think we're always right. Anyone from Cananda care to let us know what you think, also all of North,Central,and South America let's here from you.

 

[OZZYGT]

maybe they decided to setup their own date format so they would be completey unconnected to the british?

lmbfo.

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

Just for fun take a look at some of the older post under other topics and notice that the "Date " at the top will say Month/Day/Year.

Because this is an American forum?

Also just a question here when you write a check what is your format for the date. Mine is MM-DD-YY. This question as to who is right will never be answered because we're all (or some of us ) are "Human Beings" and because of that we think we're always right. Anyone from Cananda care to let us know what you think, also all of North,Central,and South America let's here from you.

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.