I realise that Fodors is based in the USA, and that the method of publishing the date of a post is in line with US practice. My question is: Is there a logic behind having 'month-day-year' rather than 'day-month-year'? The latter, probably used more widely throughout the world, at least has the virtue of 'shorter' to 'longer', but I assume there is a sound reason for the former?

Who knows the logic, but at least these days getting into the US is consistent on the matter. Used to be that US Immigration used the American convention (mm/dd/yy)on their entry form, but US Customs used the central European (dd/mm/yy) convention.

The central European convention) is more widely used that the US. I'm not sure it's the MOST widely used, though, since the Chinese use yyyy/mm/dd.

So crossing the China/HK land border in a state of some jetlag last week, I had to fill in a "yyyy/mm/dd" form to get out of China and a "dd/mm/yy" form to get into HK. I swear I threw away three forms on each side before getting it right.

"One country, two systems" is all very well. But one country, two dates?

And to confuse things even more, the US military uses the day-month-year format always. I sure wish the rest of the US would comply!

s

In Sweden, dates are normally year-month-day. Tomorrow might be 04/08/07 in the US, 08/04/07 in the UK or 07/04/08 in Sweden.
To avoid confusion, it's always best to name the month: 8 April or April 8 is clear to everybody.

But doesn't the US military also use the 24 hour clock and GMT as its standard time zone?

Does it measure in metric or imperial?

Hi again,

US military uses "zulu" time for ops orders only -- for regular operations and daily activities, we used local time.

Yes, also the US military also uses the 24-hour clock, as Europeans do. It *just* makes more sense!

I'm retired now, but I'm *not* switching back!

s

For archival information, which must include just about everything these days, logic would say yyyy/mm/dd and 24 hour clock time GMT/UTC. That is Greenwich Mean Time slash Coordinated Universal Time in London, without change for the summer.

For normal usage it is more informative to include the month spelled out or abbreviated. The time can be a local "standard" time or "daylight savings time" or "summer time."

Students of complication may wish to use the Islam calendar. Today is Rabi 19, 1428. They are 579 years behind but are catching up at the rate of 11 days per year because they use a lunar calendar.

GMT has no summer time.

Britain moves from GMT to BST when the clocks go forward.

Every time I see a date in MDY format I want to scream.

Why? Because I've had occasion to work with old computer systems where the date is stored in that format.

You can't sort on it. You have to shuffle it around.

It also reminds me of how arrogant the US is - let's stay with MDY - lets stay with Fahrenheit, and inches and miles.

And let's ignore the warnings about climate change. No penalaties there for driving a gas guzzler; no carrots for industry to get greener.

Oh, no. The American economy must be allowed to guzzle and pollute and generally go its own way.

Nuff said.

"Students of complication may wish to use the Islam calendar."

Or the French republican calendar. I happily use the French metric system, but that calendar was impossible.

Anselm

Haven't had your coffee yet, chimani?

>Is there a logic behind having 'month-day-year' rather than 'day-month-year'?

Depends on what is important.

In an agrarian economy, the Ides of April is more important than whether it is the 8th year of the reign of the current emporer.

In a modest commercial economy, where accounts are kept in ledger books numbered by year, mm/dd/yy is perfectly OK.

If, like chimani, you have to sort through computerized data sets by date then yyyy/mm/dd is most efficient.

This year is 5767 in the Hebrew calendar.

<i>Author: flanneruk
Date: 04/07/2007, 08:04 am
GMT has no summer time. </i>

Just what I wrotelt;br&gt;
<i>That is Greenwich Mean Time slash Coordinated Universal Time in London, without change for the summer. </i>

<i>Oh, no. The American economy must be allowed to guzzle and pollute and generally go its own way.</i>

We don't even come close to polluting to that of China and India, so why do you all keep picking on us??? Could it be you're jealous?

<i>And let's ignore the warnings about climate change. No penalaties there for driving a gas guzzler; no carrots for industry to get greener.</i>

Whoopie, you don't actually buy into all that global warming hooey, do you? The temperature has risen 1/2 of a degree over the past 100 years. In the 1970's, the wacko weather guessers were predicting global cooling. That's why they call them weather guessers -- no one can predict the weather.

Follow the money. There was an April Fools joke that Belgium was going to impose a BBQ tax because BBQ's were immiting to much CO2 into the atmosphere. It was just a joke, but that's what it's coming down to -- these left-wing environmental wackos are going to tax the hell out of us and make us feel guilty for living.

In fact, everytime you breathe you are immiting CO2. Maybe the gov't will tax you for just breathing (which they do now).

I have always wondered how North America changed from dd/mm to mm/dd, and why. Did someone jump up and say &quot;By Jove, I think I've got it! We'll confuse the damned royalists by changing around our date format. Everybody start using mm/dd next Tuesday.&quot;

Jealous? Jealous of what?

I like, year, month and date! ISO; 2007 April 07. And how about Monday as the first day of the week! Which countries use that order? Poland for one...How about the sites that won't accept telephone numbers using country and city codes....The same with some postal codes. And are European numbers less subject to mistake..0 with a slash, 1 with a top slash, and 7 with a center mark. And of course 6 and 9 with a bottom cross.

If I can restate the original post, does anyone know WHEN the US started this practice and/or WHY? Or has it 'always' been the custom there? An interesting outcome of the use of the 'month-day' order in the US came when a nember of Australians were asked on what date the events of '9-11' occurred. A significant majority apparently responded '9th of November'. Perhaps as a result, newspapers in Australia now seem to refer to the events of 'September 9th'.

Sorry! September 11th! (See how hard it is!)

I guess I spend too much time in Europe because more and more I find myself using the day/month/year numbers. I had a check returned from our bank because I sent it in February dated 12/02/06 and the bank returned it since it was &quot;dated in December and couldn't be cashed yet&quot;.
Then I got so confused that I recently made a comment about the mistake that the London 2 for 1 specials made, because I was reading the dates American style instead of European style.

It would be nice if there were a uniform system.

Could it be that we write the date that way because that's the way we <i>say</i> it?
If asked today's date, I would <i>say </i>, &quot;April 7th, 2007&quot; not &quot;7 April, 2007.
Or is that just a chicken or egg thing? Which came first?