How should the date be written

[Skycaptain]

Day month year

The rest is variable. Either 22.01.19, 22nd January 19, it depends on the nature of the what I'm writing. A cheque or internet post is all numbers, however a formal letter will have the month as a word if it's a sentence, but not as the header 

[MerePeasant]

For me, Tuesday 22nd January 2019 would be the most proper thing to write. But obviously will shorten as necessary: 22nd January '19, 22nd Jan., etc. Also don't like not including the 'nd', 'th', etc.

 

For numbers only I do prefer slashes: 22/1/19 ... on that note I also prefer writing '1' rather than '01' but will of course write that if necessary on forms and such.

 

My brain struggles with the American way; it really has to think hard to switch the first parts around to make sense to me.  '22nd month? I think not!'

[Grumpy Alien]

MM/DD/YYYY

 

or

 

Jan 22nd, 2019

[Pramana]

My opinion is that the date should be written in long form so as to avoid confusion between different formats.

[Tree snake]

I prefer year month day

Because that's what I'm used to.

So today is written 190306 according to the format I grew up with.

[UnknownOwl]

YYYY/MM/DD - the only way the sorts naturally on a computer. Also the ISO standard.

[Rama]

A la xkcd:

 

 

Additionally, I add the day of the week in the form of two letters, e.g., 2019-04-11 Th.

[Larkaloke]

Day/month/year makes the most sense to me, going from the smallest and most immediate unit to the largest. I'd usually write 13 April 2019, or potentially 13/05/2019 (slashes being what I'm most used to). I would sometimes also use the 13th of April, 2019. I only include the day of the week if it's relevant (Saturday the 13th, for example, as opposed to Saturday the 6th), and then I wouldn't include the month and year.

 

Month/day/year is technically preferred where I live, and that always trips me up. It is not logical to me. This is one more reason I hate forms.

[Sally]

April 12, 2019 or 4-12-19.     

[TheCatBehind]

I only have a strong opinion on day-month-year. The rest really depends on context.

[Topi]

When it is to write informally, I write 03/05/2019, if it is more formal May 3rd, 2019. I don't know why I use the day/month/year format in one and the month/day/year of the other, but that is how I do it. In a daily basis it's the informal format and that is what I prefer, but I find the month/day format more aesthetic for formal occasions for some reason.

[Guest]

dd/mm/yyyy or yyyy/mm/dd depending on the document or reason for writing but mainly just like 03/05/2019

[K.I.N.G]

I really don’t get the mm/dd/yy way of writing it at all - dd/mm/yy just makes a hell lot more sense is far quicker. 

[Crazy Cat Lady]

3 hours ago, K.I.N.G said:

I really don’t get the mm/dd/yy way of writing it at all - dd/mm/yy just makes a hell lot more sense is far quicker. 

And I feel the opposite, because I say it month/day/year. But, I think that's a cultural thing.

 

Generally, though, I never use numbers only because it's just too confusing when everyone uses those numbers differently. Someone posted above 03/05/2019, but my first thought was - is that Mar 5 (where my head goes first) or May 3? Of course, it was the date it was posted, so that's a clue, but that clue is not always there.

 

(And of course, the drawback to not using numbers is language.)

[Nirnroot]

Really it depends. On paperwork you write just numbers. If you are writing about an event you spell out the month and stuff. But I do strongly believe you should write out the full year. If I see 3/24/19 on something, I am probably to assume 2019, but what if it's 1919? Sure it's unlikely, but it just feels better to me to write the full date. 

 

[MollyDMA]

I live in America, but I hate how they label dates.

[matt_lock]

I'm a programmer, and one of the requirements of my job involes parsing dates that other people used. So I've developed a hatred of differing date formats.

 

I personally favour ISO-8601 (YYYY-MM-DD), although I will accept the standard used in my nation (DD/MM/YYYY). I will also accept any other unambiguous format (e.g. writing the month name out, putting the date format in brackets next to the date) although it over-complicates parsing.

 

I detest MM/DD/YYYY, any format that uses something other than the elements of {/, -, 年月日} and any format that has YY instead of YYYY (seriously, this is going to cause us issues in the future with people not knowing whether a date is 20XX or 19XX in museums etc.)

[Zhuangzi]

I'm from the U.S., but I think is should be day/month/year, but year/month/day does seem like a really interesting way to write the date.

[J. van Deijck]

I typically write dates in the following order of day, month and year, all in numbers, separated by slashes. so, for example, today's date would be written by me as 18/08/2019.

I have noticed that it's a pretty common date writing in my country. my mum uses Roman numerals for the month, though. she also uses dots instead of slashes.

[DragonSpirit]

Normally, 8/20/2019, or 8/20/19 could work too.

 

In formal letters or whatever, August 20, 2019 or Aug. 20, 2019. Or even use 20th. I like just 20 better.

 

This is a weird debate.

[matt_lock]

18 hours ago, DragonSpirit said:

Normally, 8/20/2019, or 8/20/19 could work too.

  

In formal letters or whatever, August 20, 2019 or Aug. 20, 2019. Or even use 20th. I like just 20 better.

  

This is a weird debate.

Well, some parts of the world use day/month/year, other parts use month/year/day. For the example you gave, it's initially confusing, but obvious since there's no 20'th month of the year.

 

For something like 05/08/2019, how is anyone supposed to tell whether it's 5 August 2019 or 8 May 2019? That ambiguity causes issues with international communications.

 

As for using 19 instead of 2019, that type of thinking were the stuff of nightmares during Y2K, will most likely cause more issues in Y2.1K, Y2.2K, with historians looking through archived text and wondering whether '70 is 2070 or 1970 ... (and some people argue that we should use 02019 instead, to rescue us from Y10K).

 

My personal opinion: maybe use the local format (in my case D/M/Y) if you know for certain that it won't be seen internationally (any maybe not even then), ISO-8601 format (YYYY-MM-DD) in all other cases. For reference, pretty much everything on the internet will be seen internationally. Or, if you write out the month name, or if you specify the date format, either in brackets or with hanzi or something, or something else that removes ambiguity, then that's fine as well.

[Strange-quark]

In everyday usage: 22.8.2019, only year colloquially -19, in English 22 August 2019 because that's how we were told to.

In archives (computers): 20190822

[Crazy Cat Lady]

On 8/20/2019 at 11:16 PM, matt_lock said:

For something like 05/08/2019, how is anyone supposed to tell whether it's 5 August 2019 or 8 May 2019? That ambiguity causes issues with international communications. 

YES! This is why I don't use numbers only, ever! (Unless I am forced to - a form or something - and it specifically tells me the order I need to use.)

[iff]

@iff

 

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