How do you write the date?

[Scott5114]

ISO 8601 (ex: 2018-01-23). If you see the year first (especially with four digits), you know the next two are the month and day respectively.

This is the only correct answer. Not only is it sensible (largest to smallest) but it also means that an alpha sort (like you might see in a file manager) will also sort the dates in the correct order.

If I cannot use this date format (e.g. on my checks which have a dateline formatted "_______ 20____") I tend to write the day first, then first three of the month (24 Jan 2018).

[1995hoo]

I also use the 2018-01-23 format whenever possible if using just numbers (though sometimes an electronic form may require another form and then obviously I just deal with it). It's the least ambiguous, and it's the most useful for making an electronic file sort chronologically. That is, the date Windows assigns to a file may not be the actual date of the document, so I might save something as "2018-01-23 Motion to Convene an Inquisition." Using the date that way ensures all the filenames sort into correct chronological order. If there's more than one item for a given day, I add a letter suffix (such as 2018-01-23-a, etc.).

I always prefer hyphens to slashes and particularly to periods when writing a date. I don't like the current fad of using periods in phone numbers, either. To me periods in a phone number or a date look too much like an IP address (yes, I know it's a different number of digits and spacing).

Whether I use day-month-year (with no punctuation) or month-day-year (with appropriate commas) when using a text date depends on the context, where I'm using it, and who will be reading the material (if I know). If I need to use a date as an adjective, I always prefer the day-month-year style because I find the commas around the year to be awkward in an adjectival date. That is, because the month-day-year format takes a comma both before and after the year, you would write "your January 23, 2018, letter." I don't especially like the way that looks; I find "your 23 January 2018 letter" to be preferable. But if I do that, I'll then use that date format throughout the document because mixing formats is bad. (More likely I will word the sentence so as to avoid the issue: "I received your letter dated January 23, 2018, in which you stated blah blah blah.")

A lot of people these days inexplicably omit the comma after the year even when the date is not being used as an adjective, but that doesn't make sense. The year is in the nature of an appositive. It tells you which January 23 and it isn't necessarily essential to the sentence. "On February 4, 2018, Minneapolis will host the Super Bowl." "On February 4, Minneapolis will host the Super Bowl." Both sentences work equally well for most purposes unless there is a particular reason why you need to specify 2018 (say, if you were typing that sentence two years ago and needed to clarify it was a future year). Since the "2018" isn't grammatically essential and is there solely to provide clarification, it gets set off by commas.

[Buck87]

M-D-Y or M/D/Y

I find myself interchangeably using hyphens or slashes, but if I'm thinking about it I will defer to hyphens because a slash could easily be mistaken for a "1" when handwritten.

[NWI_Irish96]

I most often use MM/DD/YY and sometimes use MM/DD/YYYY.  I never use leading zeroes for the month and day if they are single digits.

[jeffandnicole]

1-24-18

If I'm saving a file on the computer and want to incorporate the date (say, on a file I update daily but need to maintain for historical reasons), then I usually will do "File Name 012418.xlsx"

[CNGL-Leudimin]

DD/MM/YYYY. Thus, when I see a date in the format MM/DD/YYYY I get confused, especially up to the 12th day of each month. My birthday and Independence Day are almost three months apart.

[1995hoo]

I most often use MM/DD/YY and sometimes use MM/DD/YYYY.  I never use leading zeroes for the month and day if they are single digits.

I find the leading zeroes to be essential for computer purposes because otherwise it may sort incorrectly, depending on what software I'm using: 1-24-2018, or 2018-1-24, might be followed by, say, 10-24-2018 or 2018-10-24 prior to 2-24-2018 or 2018-2-24 because it doesn't know to read "10" as "ten." Using the leading zero solves the problem.

[02 Park Ave]

FYI - The ITU format for telephone nimbers is:  +  Country Code  NUmber with no dashes or periods.  Here is an example:  +1 856 555 1234

[Eth]

As a software developer, avoiding ambiguity is of major importance. So I stick with the ISO 8601 format whenever practical (2018-01-24), though in some non-computer-based scenarios I'll still use the classic 1/24/18 (writing the date on my rent checks, for instance). "24 Jan 2018" is acceptable, "24/1/18" certainly not.

[Pete from Boston]

ISO 8601 (ex: 2018-01-23). If you see the year first (especially with four digits), you know the next two are the month and day respectively.

This is the only correct answer. Not only is it sensible (largest to smallest) but it also means that an alpha sort (like you might see in a file manager) will also sort the dates in the correct order.

If I cannot use this date format (e.g. on my checks which have a dateline formatted "_______ 20____") I tend to write the day first, then first three of the month (24 Jan 2018).

"This is the only correct answer."  Come on, now.  The correct answer is the one that's most appropriate to the context in which you're writing, the way most likely to be understood in a given scenario.

[Doctor Whom]

In business correspondence: January 24, 2018
When writing checks, which I still do on rare occasion: 24 Jan 2018
When naming files: 2018-01-24
When I am feeling lazy and I know for certain that the recipient will know what I mean: 1/24 or 1/24/18
When filling out forms for filing in government agencies: whatever the instructions say, and heaven forbid they should be consistent

[english si]

The problem with it is cultural, yes, the logic you use from smallest to largest is similar to those who adamantly see the metric system as being superior in every way to the imperial system.

No it's not. I'm definitely not in the former category, but I can't understand not sorting by size with dates - there's no reason not to. middle/little/big is a really weird of formatting numbers with no rhyme nor reason why. For a start, it's burying the important info, the day, in the middle.

If you are going to do month-day numerically then put the year at the beginning like the ISO standard! If you spell out the month, it doesn't matter as the ambiguity issues are gone.

That most American of dates, is typically said the British way - the 4th of July, not July 4. 


I usually use slashes, sometimes use dashes, as separators. I typically go smallest to biggest, as the computers I'm using have the date as an option to sort files by, so I rarely use the date in file-names, preferring something descriptive of what it is. It's always <ordinal number> of <month> when I say it, so that's the full hand version.

Full-hand: 24^th of January, 2018
Cheques, etc: 24^th Jan 2018
Just noting the date: 24/1/18 (occasionally 24-1-18, and depending on task, I might put in a leading zero on single digit numbers)

Thing is, I rarely write the date nowadays, especially with a year. Registers and rotas, where it's a simple 24/1 to convey the minimum information needed the most efficient way. Otherwise it is just stuff like "we're doing this on the 24th" without even a month.

[KEVIN_224]

January 24, 2018. I will never use "and" within a year. Did people ever party like it was 19 hundred-and-99? Of course not!

[kphoger]

In emails or accompanying my signature, I use MM-DD-YYYY.

For file names that I want to be sorted chronologically, I use YYYY-MM-DD.

[english si]

For instance, saying a Y-M-D format would be incredibly awkward "Today is 2018, January the twenty-third" .

Indeed, what weirdos say "January the twenty-third" rather than "the twenty-third of January"? Is it like Richard the third, where it's the third Richard? 

Unless all 4 Year digits are there, especially with the current part of the century we are in, ambiguities are still possible. 12-1-18 could be January 12, 2018 or January 18, 2012 depending on what date format you expect.

The era-changing demolition of a structure that happened on 9/11 was the fall of the Berlin wall in November '89, not the fall of the WTC on 11/9.

This is why I would spell out the month (well 3 letters at least) in a Transatlantic conversation - it kills the ambiguity.

At least with the 7/7 London tube bombings, Americans wouldn't get confused by the date it happened.

As for the year, ISO specifies four numbers.

I grew up in a military household, so "23 Jan 2018". Using just numbers, I used to write 1/23/18, but I've transitioned to 23.1.2018. Day.month.year just makes too much damn sense (I prefer full stops to hyphens for personal reasons).

Full stops (periods to our yankee friends) was how I initially learnt dates. I'm pretty sure it still is now. But people use slashes, and if not dashes. It's most odd.

I will never use "and" within a year.

Two-thousand-one just sounds horrible to my ears.

Did people ever party like it was 19 hundred-and-99? Of course not!

Not least as they said it like 19-99, not 1999!

It didn't happen for 20- until 20-10, for the obvious ambiguity of how 20-1 sounds (some have tried to back number those years as 20-o-1, but it's not taken off) which didn't happen with 19-5. Plus there was the whole emphasising the new millenium (2x1000, rather than 20x100) and Two Thousand and One: A Space Oddessy (EN(US) speakers might have dropped the 'and' bit even though Arthur C Clarke says the and) stuff. It took a while for 20-xx format to stick in the UK: it was two thousand and ten for many, even though it was (finally) 20-10 for others. What killed the say the whole number out format dead was the 20-12 branding for the Olympics. We're yet to get to the default being to drop the century: back in '13 isn't that common.

British and Americans (at least US Americans) speak different when it comes to numbers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBbBbY4qvv4

[J N Winkler]

I use the ISO date format when it is just the date and I do not have to fight date preformatting (e.g., paper or Web forms with discrete blanks for day/month/year).  For combined date/time in connection with scripts and logfiles therefor, I use YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS where HH uses the 24-hour clock.  For my purposes the ISO format for combined date/time is overpunctuated and overprecise.

I try to avoid omitting the year because I have found that apparently quotidian paperwork can linger well beyond the current year.

[abefroman329]

MM/DD/YY through 1999, MM/DD/YYYY starting in 2000.

[freebrickproductions]

I use M-D-Y (1-24-18) or M/D/Y (1/24/18) most of the time, probably with a slight favoring of the former. I'll also write out the date as Month Day, Year (January 24, 2018) if I have to though.

[hockeyjohn]

24-Jan-2018 OR 24 Jan 2018

[Scott5114]

ISO 8601 (ex: 2018-01-23). If you see the year first (especially with four digits), you know the next two are the month and day respectively.

This is the only correct answer. Not only is it sensible (largest to smallest) but it also means that an alpha sort (like you might see in a file manager) will also sort the dates in the correct order.

If I cannot use this date format (e.g. on my checks which have a dateline formatted "_______ 20____") I tend to write the day first, then first three of the month (24 Jan 2018).

"This is the only correct answer."  Come on, now.  The correct answer is the one that's most appropriate to the context in which you're writing, the way most likely to be understood in a given scenario.

YOUR POST JUST GOT TEN MORE INCORRECT

[slorydn1]

When signing and dating a document by hand (like my time sheet for instance): 1/25/18

When making a post about something I usually post the date like I would write it, or I may type out Jan 25th 2018.

When corresponding with family members who are in the military: either 25 JAN 2018, or 180125 (when I reported to Navy boot camp on 890821 the year was only 2 digit, not sure on the proper format now post Y2k but my family members haven't complained so.....)

My CAD system at work shows the date as 01/25/2018 but uses the military 24hr clock.

[formulanone]

The era-changing demolition of a structure that happened on 9/11 was the fall of the Berlin wall in November '89, not the fall of the WTC on 11/9.

You write your disasters your way and we'll write our disasters our way.

Period / Full stop.

End of that discussion.

[english si]

You write your disasters your way and we'll write our disasters our way.

Fall of the Berlin Wall wasn't a disaster.

We call 2001-09-11 '9/11' here outside America too, normally followed by a (pointless as people know what referring to date is talking about) disambiguation to say that we're talking about September 11th not 9th of November, because we cannot resist a jokey dig at Americans being different*. My point was that the existence of the US system makes the first 12 days each month ambiguous, and I took the example most used to point it out.

*I don't know whether jokes about 'Five Kilometre Island' exist.

[formulanone]

You write your disasters your way and we'll write our disasters our way.

Fall of the Berlin Wall wasn't a disaster.

We call 2001-09-11 '9/11' here outside America too, normally followed by a (pointless as people know what referring to date is talking about) disambiguation to say that we're talking about September 11th not 9th of November, because we cannot resist a jokey dig at Americans being different*. My point was that the existence of the US system makes the first 12 days each month ambiguous, and I took the example most used to point it out.

*I don't know whether jokes about 'Five Kilometre Island' exist.

(You'd mentioned 7/7 upthread.)

It's called "culture" for everyone else who does something "different", but if you're an American, it's "foolish behavior".

Wake me when this re-run programme is over.

[english si]

It's called "culture" for everyone else who does something "different", but if you're an American, it's "foolish behavior".

Where did I say that?

Sure, I said month-day-year is illogical, but this was talking about month-day vs day-month where both are equally logical, but there's ambiguity as to which different system is being used.

I really don't get why you are being so huffy about this.