Is Today's Date a Special One for Foreigners?

[Jimmy Snyder]

Or 12/11/11 for foreigners. Actually, I opened this thread for Russ who seems to need that extra push over the cliff. By the way, this won't happen again for another hundred years. Or next month if you're a foreigner.

 

[arildno]

You anglosaxons are so lucky.

A whole quasi-palindromian month!

 

[Adyssa]

Out of curiousity, what is the reason for the day/month inversion for dates in the US?

dd-mm-yy seems ... really natural, mm-dd-yy is confusing!

 

[arildno]

Out of curiousity, what is the reason for the day/month inversion for dates in the US?

dd-mm-yy seems ... really natural, mm-dd-yy is confusing!

It goes all the way back to the battle at Stamford Bridge.
A story too long to tell.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Out of curiousity, what is the reason for the day/month inversion for dates in the US?

dd-mm-yy seems ... really natural, mm-dd-yy is confusing!

yyyy-mm-dd makes the most sense since when it sorts alphabetically, it also sorts chronologically.

 

[Borek]

yyyy-mm-dd makes the most sense since when it sorts alphabetically, it also sorts chronologically.

I have no problem with yyyy-mm-dd nor dd-mm-yyyy, at times it is little bit confusing when it is dd-mm-yy or yy-mm-dd, what I was never able to understand was yy-dd-mm. This is something only WASPs could come with (and yes, I know it is a racist comment ).

 

[arildno]

What abut dydymymy??

 

[D H]

It is how we speak. Occasionally we will say things like "the fourth of July," but that is for emphasis and affectation. Generally we express dates as "July 4th" or "July 4" for short. For example, The Declaration of Independence starts with "IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776" rather than "IN CONGRESS, on the fourth day of July in the year of our Lord 1776."

 

[cmb]

"IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776"

It makes sense to write how you say it, but it doesn't make sense to then convert a word into a number. For the benefit of my erstwhile US colleagues, I used to write, e.g., 12NOV90, thus eliminating ambiguity.

What makes sense is to open your eggs at the big end, yyyy-mm-dd. Big-endian is the principle adopted by the ISO standard dating system, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601" .

(Edit: I changed the example date, due to later comments observing that it is not unambiguous for some years of the century.)

 

[Borek]

I used to write 12NOV11, thus eliminating ambiguity

Eliminating ambiguity?

 

[D H]

Eliminating ambiguity?

There is no ambiguity regarding whether 11 identifies a day of the month versus a month if the rule is to name the month (in full or in abbreviated form) rather than to number it.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

There is no ambiguity regarding whether 11 identifies a day of the month versus a month if the rule is to name the month (in full or in abbreviated form) rather than to number it.

So, is today 11NOV12, or 12NOV11?

 

[cmb]

So, is today 11NOV12, or 12NOV11?

Fair point. But when I used to use this format, it was the 80's/90's, and I believe not many calendar months have more than 80 days. I use ISO8601 now, anyway.

I occasionally still write my birth date in this format, and as I am less than 70 years old, there is little ambiguity unless people were to believe I am a lot more than 100 years old.

 

[256bits]

The choices. The choices.
Pick a date style in MS Excel, and then an hour-minute second format for complete going mad-hatters.

 

[SW VandeCarr]

I use the Julian Date myself. It's just a count of days since a time long ago when nothing in particular happened. Today's date (UT) is 2,455,878.5.

http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/JulianDate.php

It does upset people for some reason.