# why do americans do month-day-year instead of day-month-year



## TinderBox (UK) (Feb 20, 2006)

It does my head in.


----------



## daBear (Feb 20, 2006)

The American military has always used day/month/year such as today is 20 February 2006. The way civilians in the US write dates can be very confusing if if the day of the month is less than 12.


----------



## jtice (Feb 20, 2006)

Why do you do day/month/year? :thinking: hehe

Just the way I was always taught, :shrug:
Why dont we use the metric system? :shrug:


----------



## TinderBox (UK) (Feb 20, 2006)

I have a problem working out when thing were done or made.

eg 6-4-2005

is the 6th day, of the 4th month

or the 6th month of the 4th day.

I think most of the world use day,month,year.

remember that space probe that was supposed to go into orbit around mars crashed into it because of a mixup between metric and imperial mesurments.

regards.


----------



## BentHeadTX (Feb 20, 2006)

daBear said:


> The American military has always used day/month/year such as today is 20 February 2006. The way civilians in the US write dates can be very confusing if if the day of the month is less than 12.



I usually write dates 20 Feb 06 so not to cause confusion.


----------



## AJ_Dual (Feb 20, 2006)

*Because it mirrors conversational American English.*

In American English, at least conversationaly, it's natural to say it that way, so it's often written that way.

_"What's today's date?", she asked.

In reply, he said, "Oh, it's February twentieth, two-thousand and six."_

So that would be written as: Feb. 20, 2006, or 2/20/06.

I think the reasoning is that for at least the first 28 days of each month, all twelve months have a 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. so by putting the month first, you're immediately eliminating the question: "Which 20th is it?" In essence it's using the month as a adjective to the day. It's like saying: _"A red apple."_In English, putting certain adjectives behind the noun without a modifier or pronoun is awkward, it's like trying to say _"A apple red."_

It's not unusual to say it day, month, year, either, but it's not quite as common.

_"In reply, he said, "Oh, it's the twentieth *of* February, two-thousand and six."_ but you have to have the pronoun "of" in the sentence to link the adjective of the month to the primary noun of the numbered date. Of course, this isn't entirely accurate, as you could pick any portion of the date as the primary noun, such as using the year with day and month as the modifying adjectives too...

Anyway, that would write as: 20, Feb. 2006, or 20-2-06. Putting the date first in purely abbreviated or numeric notation might seem subconciously awkward to American English speakers since the "of" that can be there when written or spoken isn't there in purely numeric form.

If you hunt around in American documents and literature or computers, you'll find both formats, but month-first seems to dominate in the common parlance.


----------



## greenLED (Feb 20, 2006)

day-month-year: a logical progession from smallest to largest time unit. But, hey, that's just me - I'm a supporter of SI.

My mother uses roman numerals for the month (but still the day-month-year sequence) - that's how she learned it. :thinking:


----------



## gadget_lover (Feb 20, 2006)

Those of us that do simple computer time math prefer year month day.

20051201 is definitely less than 20060101, so it's easy to do that way.

Most time calculations are done by converting to the nmber of seconds since a common starting point. Then it's easy to add or subtract days, weeks and months.

I think the US does mmddyy for reasons of convention. You pick one and stick with it and everyone will know. The downfall is that it IS ambiguous with few ways to tell when it's reversed. 

Daniel


----------



## greenLED (Feb 20, 2006)

gadget_lover said:


> 20051201 is definitely less than 20060101, so it's easy to do that way.



Agree, I use that format to store my chronologically-relevant research data. It does follow a logic progression, from largest to smallest time unit (and it sorts appropriately by computers), whereas the month-day-year breaks that progression. :green:


How many bushels are there in a chain 3oz and 21/32"?
:laughing:


----------



## TinderBox (UK) (Feb 20, 2006)

if sombody asks you the date the chances are that they will mean the day, because likely they will know the month, and unless their from another planet, or been in a coma, will definitely know the year.

if somebody asked you the date and you said feburary, you would think they were daft.

regards.


----------



## Bradlee (Feb 20, 2006)

Things here in Canada (where we do use the metric system) were still never clear. I beleive the banks were having trouble with cheques, and not knowing whether the person intended the date to be DMY or MDY. I think that most banks within the last few months have changed their cheques to indicate clearly the preferred method of dating.


----------



## Robban (Feb 20, 2006)

ISO 8601 is the only way to go.
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html


----------



## Icebreak (Feb 20, 2006)

gadget_lover -

Don't you just love it when you are having to deal with legacy data and finally realize that the 040305xxxx file is from April the 3rd, 2005 instead of March the 5th, 2004?

Data files and unique ID incrementers should be yyyy/mm/dd not mm/dd/yy. I've been known to say curtly, "Don't use mama dada yaya!" I don't mind if mm/dd/yyyy is used in a GUI and associated records just not the file names or unique IDs.


----------



## lightlust (Feb 20, 2006)

All of my science courses were in feet, inches, pounds, and Fahrenheit until college. Then everything was meters, liters, Celsius, grams, and day-month-year.

Some have defined "convention" as the practice of making the same mistake every generation in the name of tradition. 

*:laughing: I prefer to quote Abe Simpson: [size=-1]"My car gets forty rods to the hogshead and that's the way I like it!" :laughing:
[/size]*


----------



## Lee1959 (Feb 20, 2006)

It really got confusing when I worked as a Systems Analyst for so long and dates were YY/MM/DD for date stamp comparisions and generally used that way, or had to be broken up and rearraged before being put in files, sometimes figuring out which came first for splitting up was notalways easy depending upon the information source. Which of course led to the whole Y2K freakout. We always joked we wanted to be retired before we had to go in and rewrite all the systems to accomdate a 4 digit year, so it was WELL know it was going to happen years and years before.


----------



## TinderBox (UK) (Feb 20, 2006)

I suppose if your working on material over one year old, say an archive.

you would want to go to the year then the month and final the day.

regards.


----------



## Samoan (Feb 20, 2006)

BentHeadTX said:


> I usually write dates 20 Feb 06 so not to cause confusion.



I'm a Credit Union Manager and in banking (can you say Credit Unioning?) we also use this convention. How long we've had someone's money or how long they've had ours is kinda important.

To confuse matters, when doing database querries it's yyyymmdd...most of the time.

-F


----------



## gadget_lover (Feb 20, 2006)

Yes, I hate it icebreak. There's a concept of embedding information into file names, strings and labels that appears to be a natural tendancy. I've seen lots of data embedded into file names. Sometimes it's OK, like the version of a program patch. More often than not, there should have been an identifier IN the file and the file name should have just been unique with no real significance.

Slightly off topic: 

I've worked at places that use complex naming structures for their computers based on all sorts of things. 

sf01po1 Was San Francisco Location 1, Production Oracle system number 1. This broke, of course, when the machine moved, was reused or had added functionality. It also broke when a new manager insisted that development machines needed "dev" inserted in the middle. Sheesh!


Daniel


----------



## magic79 (Feb 20, 2006)

Then there is the custom of some countries using "," as a decimal point; we use "." in the U.S. In the U.S. "," is used to separate thousands, millions, etc. when writing numbers.

Where else uses "."?


----------



## CLHC (Feb 20, 2006)

TinderBox (UK) said:


> Why. . .


Because. . .


----------



## Icebreak (Feb 20, 2006)

gadget_lover said:


> Yes, I hate it icebreak. There's a concept of embedding information into file names, strings and labels that appears to be a natural tendancy. I've seen lots of data embedded into file names. Sometimes it's OK, like the version of a program patch.



And if the patch has multiple files, whether it's mine or from a contractor, I'll put a dat or doc file in the patch folder named something like AAAyyyymmddReadVs.dat with a little description.



gadget_lover said:


> More often than not, there should have been an identifier IN the file and the file name should have just been unique with no real significance.


Can I get witness over here ya'll? Or how about a HEADER?



gadget_lover said:


> I've worked at places that use complex naming structures for their computers based on all sorts of things.
> 
> sf01po1 Was San Francisco Location 1, Production Oracle system number 1. This broke, of course, when the machine moved, was reused or had added functionality. It also broke when a new manager insisted that development machines needed "dev" inserted in the middle. Sheesh!Daniel



And then the SEs say there ain't enough room on the production servers for your 1 year build that they've known about for 2 years so you have to implement straight off a dev and the new mngr. thinks that's just peachy. "Long as it works. That's all I care about." "Really? Then shut up."

I think some of my people must know some of your people. :laughing:

200602201503IcebreakP21


----------



## greenLED (Feb 20, 2006)

magic79 said:


> Then there is the custom of some countries using "," as a decimal point; we use "." in the U.S. In the U.S. "," is used to separate thousands, millions, etc. when writing numbers.
> 
> Where else uses "."?



A period should only be used to indicate decimal point. The option of grouping digits in "threes" (and leaving a space between groups) is optional. It gets really confusing.


----------



## magic79 (Feb 20, 2006)

greenLED said:


> A period should only be used to indicate decimal point. The option of grouping digits in "threes" (and leaving a space between groups) is optional. It gets really confusing.


 
I think you missed my point. In some European and Asian countries, "seven point five three" would be written: 7,53


----------



## Unicorn (Feb 20, 2006)

daBear said:


> The American military has always used day/month/year such as today is 20 February 2006. The way civilians in the US write dates can be very confusing if if the day of the month is less than 12.



The Army actually has it two ways, this Day, Month, Year, and for some things like orders it's Year, Month, Day (and for some types of reports and order the time is put before the year). I think it's year, month, then day anway.


----------



## carrot (Feb 20, 2006)

Americans have the tendency not to follow the conventions the rest of the world does. I don't know why. I tried using European numerical date conventions for awhile, ie. 20/2/06 but it just gets me confused... and everyone on this side of the world as well. But, refusing to use the awkward American system which doesn't make divisional sense (days in a month; months in a year), I use 20 Feb 06, which ends up confusing nobody. 

Whenever I use numbers only, as gadget_lover pointed out first, it makes the most sense to me to do 20060220xxxx.

Another oddity as magic79 noted: 
200,000,000.000
200 000 000,000

I'd like to travel back in time and smack the guy who decided America should do everything (measurement and format) differently.


----------



## greenLED (Feb 20, 2006)

carrot said:


> Another oddity as magic79 noted:
> 200,000,000.000
> 200 000 000,000/QUOTE]
> 
> ...


----------



## carrot (Feb 20, 2006)

greenLED said:


> carrot said:
> 
> 
> > Another oddity as magic79 noted:
> ...


----------



## winny (Feb 20, 2006)

greenLED said:


> I'm a supporter of SI.



Kudos for that!

Anyway, TinderBox (UK), that was a very good question! It will be interesting to see what everyones thoughts about this are.

If anyone wonder, I prefer 2006-02-21 or 060221 if you are short on space. It's the unofficial industrial standard over here. However, food products from the US that you see here (mainly corn cans) have an expire date like "23 MAY 2007". _That_ can't be argued with as it leaves no room for misunderstandings.


----------



## Longbow (Feb 20, 2006)

Because it prevents the British from deciphering the dates on secret military documents. :devil:


----------



## pizzle (Feb 20, 2006)

because we can't do it the same way our former oppressors did.

(on a serious note, the MLA American style follows the british way)


----------



## Nightwatch (Feb 20, 2006)

Robban said:


> ISO 8601 is the only way to go.
> http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html



That's what we have to use at work and I find myself using it more often at home as well.


----------



## meeshu (Feb 20, 2006)

greenLED said:


> day-month-year: a logical progession from smallest to largest time unit . .



Agreed!!

Month-day-year is illogical!


----------



## tvodrd (Feb 20, 2006)

There's also the Julian calendar, which is still used. You have to scroll down. It's pretty unambiguous.

Larry


----------



## Coop (Feb 20, 2006)

greenLED said:


> day-month-year: a logical progession from smallest to largest time unit.



Right... so what about time then?? thats usually hh:mm:ss so thats large to small again...


----------



## jtr1962 (Feb 20, 2006)

I usually use day-month-year, especially on PCB artwork. It's always seemed more logical to me. As to why we do it month-day-year on this side of pond, it's another cultural difference just as we use airplane instead of aeroplane, aluminum instead of aluminium, and right away instead of straight away. I personally prefer and use the latter in all three cases.


----------



## AlexGT (Feb 20, 2006)

And have you heard of the american billion? 

1,000,000,000 same as saying 1000 million (One thousand million)

Versus

The rest of the world billion

1,000,000,000,000 as in saying 1,000,000 million (A million million)

I just dont get it!!!!:huh2: 

Hey, why do you all speak English anyway????  :nana: 

AlexGT:buddies:


----------



## PlayboyJoeShmoe (Feb 20, 2006)

Today is 2-20-06, aka Feb. 20, 2006 or the twentieth of Feb. 2006.

But I write service tickets as 2-20-06. Can't even concieve of 20-02-2006!


----------



## GG_Blaisdell (Feb 20, 2006)

I always write the date DayMonthYear, (as mentioned above by other CPF patrons) for example today would be 20FEB06 . Very few people become confused due to this format.


----------



## magic79 (Feb 20, 2006)

carrot said:


> I'd like to travel back in time and smack the guy who decided America should do everything (measurement and format) differently.


 
Since the measurement system we use is called "English units", I assume that WE (U.S.) didn't change, but U.K. changed! I think we're doing it the same!


----------



## NewBie (Feb 21, 2006)

daBear said:


> The American military has always used day/month/year such as today is 20 February 2006. The way civilians in the US write dates can be very confusing if if the day of the month is less than 12.



When I was in, we used Year, Month, Day.

Of course, we used Julian Dates more, such as 92257, the 257th day of 1992.


And the Metric system proponents are really a bunch of hypocrites, they never adopted the Metric clock, I remember it being introduced back school around 1979 or so. Anyone remember the official adoption date of the metric system?


The metric system is full of really weird units, such as the Barn. It is just that most people use only the easy ones.

Other odd metric measurements:
kiloponds
hyl
TME
mug
metric slug.


----------



## magic79 (Feb 21, 2006)

NewBie said:


> Other odd metric measurements:
> kiloponds
> hyl
> TME
> ...


 
"Erg" said the dyne centimeter!


----------



## nemul (Feb 21, 2006)

i do 02/21/06 and so does windows (well, 02/21/2006)!  lol


----------



## TooManyGizmos (Feb 22, 2006)

In regions where it's dark for 3 months straight , do they use time designators of AM and PM ?

If the sun didn't come up over the horizon .............how could there be AM ?

That must be the basis for 24hr military time .

It's 22 hundred O'clock........time to go to bed .

Where did the term O'clock come from and what does it really mean . Is it an abbreviation of something ?


Aaachhoooooo..........Bless you............?:huh2:


______________________________________


----------



## The_LED_Museum (Feb 22, 2006)

O'clock means "of the clock".
I learned this from my sixth grade teacher I believe.


----------



## TooManyGizmos (Feb 22, 2006)

The_LED_Museum said:


> O'clock means "of the clock".
> I learned this from my sixth grade teacher I believe.


_________________________________

You sure it wasn't " on th clock " . tater guy ?


____________________________


----------



## chmsam (Feb 22, 2006)

I personally try to write out the month or at least as an abbreviation to avoid confusion, but we all have locally standard practices.

But we also don't use the metric system and that has caused a bit of a flop with NASA at least once ("Oh, was that calibration supposed to be in meters and not feet? Does that matter? Now, where is that lander?" WHOOMP!).

How many accidents each year are caused by drivers on vacation driving on the wrong side of the road or pedestrians looking for oncoming traffic in the wrong direction? Old habits aren't the only things that die hard!

In the US, if you say that you're going to come 'round and knock someone up and return their rubber, it means something a tiny, little bit different. In the UK, a man who asks where his suspenders are can get a very strange look, and you should try to be careful how you flash that peace sign with your fingers, too!

What is life without a little challenge and variety?


----------

