When writing out dates, do you guys put the month before the day, or the day before the month?

[Repacharge]

I feel like its more normal for me to type 5/26/2020, but I have seen some people write it as 26/5/2020, so im wondering which way you would write it

 

[djnysted]

I do Month/Day/Year but I'm pretty sure that's a pretty American way of doing things.

 

[Fire]

The US, Canada, and the Philippines use MM/DD/YY, and everywhere else uses DD/MM/YY, so the real question here is simply "do you live in North America or not", which I do so I use MM/DD/YY

 

[Repacharge]

that's weird, why is it that it only includes those three countries?

 

[_Trains_]

Canada uses DD/MM/YYYY as all commonthwealth countries do @_fire_ .-.

 

[rickyboy320]

the best are

YYYY/MM/DD or DD/MM/YYYY

the rest makes no sense (unless you write the month in full)

Essentially, yeah, it's pretty much different per country (most use DD/MM/YYYY tho, universal standard is YYYY/MM/DD)

Date format by country - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Fire]

Canada uses DD/MM/YYYY as all commonthwealth countries do @_fire_ .-.

Blame Google ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Hex]

Mm/DD/YYYY mimicks the order of spelling it out at least in English (May 15 1993) but i only use DD/MM/YYYY because why tf would you use anything else

 

[CreepaShadowz]

Mm/DD/YYYY mimicks the order of spelling it out at least in English (May 15 1993) but i only use DD/MM/YYYY because why tf would you use anything else

"Fourth of July"

Lotta people do say 15th of March.

 

[picklesthecheeta]

I use YDYMMYDY

 

[Hex]

Yeah but that's not how we're taught to write it here.

 

[djnysted]

Personally I find MM/DD/YY to be optimal in terms of comparative relevance for conversation

 

[Berend]

DD-MM-YY for me, small to big timespan. when I see slashes I usually expect MM/DD/YY

 

[Chillers]

 

[JonBimblesticks]

I feel like its more normal for me to type 5/26/2020, but I have seen some people write it as 26/5/2020, so im wondering which way you would write it

DD/MM/YYYY is objectively the best way of writing it as you're simply increasing the size of the unit as you move rightwards. MM/DD/YYYY is ridiculous, go from big to small to even bigger what were Yankees thinking?

 

[Tetration]

Obviously you gotta go with YYYY/MM/DD, so you can actually sort the dates.

 

[Chillers]

Obviously you gotta go with YYYY/MM/DD, so you can actually sort the dates.

This is true, this is how i sort my 50k pictures.

Also it enrages me that the US use a different dating system that on some sites, dates like 3/3/2020 i often find myself wondering is it US syntax or global?

 

[Repacharge]

But when you actually look at the numbers when you write down MM/DD/YY the numbers are almost always going to be increasing whereas if you write DD/MM/YY it will sometimes just be big number, small number, huge number.

 

[djnysted]

Yeah I see it as increasing relevance... if you were trying to relay a date to someone blindly, personally, I'd give them month first (It's May), then specific day (It's May 27th), and finally year (It's May 27th, 2020). I definitely see the practicality of having DD/MM/YYYY but I don't find it as useful for relaying information quickly. It was also said elsewhere in the thread, but it's much more common to state dates as "May 27th" rather than "27th of May", at least regionally, so I feel it flows better.

 

[rickyboy320]

But when you actually look at the numbers when you write down MM/DD/YY the numbers are almost always going to be increasing whereas if you write DD/MM/YY it will sometimes just be big number, small number, huge number.

Uh, same with MM/DD/YY though (12/01/20). I don't think that should be more important than a logical ordering (such as hh:mm:ss) where it goes either from large unit to small unit, or vice versa. Our entire numbering system is based on this fact (10 = 9+1, and 31 days + 1 day = next month, first day)), so MM/DD/YYYY as a numbering notation just doesn't make sense to me.

Yeah I see it as increasing relevance... if you were trying to relay a date to someone blindly, personally, I'd give them month first (It's May), then specific day (It's May 27th), and finally year (It's May 27th, 2020). I definitely see the practicality of having DD/MM/YYYY but I don't find it as useful for relaying information quickly. It was also said elsewhere in the thread, but it's much more common to state dates as "May 27th" rather than "27th of May", at least regionally, so I feel it flows better.

I get that it's coming from the English way of writing/talking about dates, though any reason why months are more relevant than days? I feel that in most contexts where you talk about a date in the near future, you generally don't even need to specify the month: "the party is on the 4th", can only really refer to the next '4th' in the sequence -- in this case June 4th (time of writing is May 27th). Vice versa, if the month is important (but the day isn't), you omit the day. If you need both, I feel they are of equal importance. So, in the end, I feel it's an artefact of the way you pronounce a date string... In Dutch we simply say '27 mei' or '8 april' (note even the lack of capitalization), which may be why I find the DD/MM/YYYY so logical. But what I truly find interesting is how other English speaking countries outside of US also use DD/MM/YYYY, while still describing full-written days as Month DDth, YYYY.