I dislike the DD-MM-YYYY and the MM-DD-YYYY formats equally for the reason that the two can easily become confused.
I was brought up in South Africa. For some insane reason we were taught to write the date as day-month-year in English and month-day-year in Afrikaans. (Both languages had equal standing in law). This caused further problems for things like post office rubber stamps - did they use the English date or the Afrikaans date - eg "Dec" or "Des" for the last month of the year. When South Africa adopted the metric system, the Government decided to sort the problem out for once and for all - the ISO 8601 format was used for all Government purposes. _____ From: owner-u...@colostate.edu [mailto:owner-u...@colostate.edu] On Behalf Of Stephen Mangum Sent: 10 March 2009 18:38 To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:43645] Re: 24 hour time I prefer DD-MM-YYYY (and other formats in this order), but have found myself writing YYYY-MM-DD as of late. The problem I have with the latter is the difficulty in reading it. 4 July 1776 can be read "the fourth of July, seventeen seventy six." How does one read 1776-07-04? Or is the discussion about announcements and hours and not prose? What I like about the ISO standard is the lack of confusion: I think most Americans will know what it means, while they will read 04/07/1776 as "March seventh." Stephen Mangum On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 11:16 AM, Brian J White <br...@bjwhite.net> wrote: There aren instances where that's handy.....but really, ISO standard is the way to go, worldwide. It's more hidden than anything else. I usually see it on receipts and schedules and such. But not for "human" use per se. Shame too, because it works nicely worldwide. At 11:08 2009-03-10, Stephen Humphreys wrote: I like the "Oracle" (huge US software company) way of doing things: 'DD-MON-RR' or 'DD-MON-YYYY' So today would be 10-MAR-09 or 10-MAR-2009 _____ From: stan.do...@verizon.net To: usma@colostate.edu Subject: [USMA:43635] Re: 24 hour time Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 12:18:24 -0400 You are correct in fostering the use of the ISO date format; however, I prefer to use a dash (-) rather than a slash (/) as a separator in the date format. For example 20009-03-10. A dash makes it better readable. Stan Doore ----- Original Message ----- From: John Frewen-Lord <mailto:j...@frewston.plus.com> To: U.S. Metric Association <mailto:usma@colostate.edu> Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2009 5:49 AM Subject: [USMA:43628] Re: 24 hour time The best way for the US to change its date format is to go straight to the ISO format of YYYY/MM/DD. When Canada converted in the late '70s, this was the official format at the time, and all Canadian Federal and Provincial government documentation at the time had to follow this format. Regretfully, and primarily thanks to Mr Gates, this seems to have been abandoned, due in no small part to Windows defaulting to the US-only format, regardless of which country it is sold in. This is not merely of academic interest. I bank with HSBC, and have both UK and Canadian bank accounts, including something called Global View, where I can view on line (and switch money on line between) my accounts in both countries simultaneously. The UK accounts are shown in DD/MM/YY format. The Canadian ones are shown in MM/DD/YY format when looking at statement summaries or selecting a date range to view a statement - but the individual entries in that statement are shown in DD/MM/YY format! Needless to say this is infuriating and confusing, and I wonder why HSBC do this, as they are UK-based. However, my printed Canadian statements are postmarked in NY State with US postage, so there must be a US connection in there somewhere. If anyone does online currency trading, all the trading platforms are in YYYY/MM/DD format, and various online videos I receive from US-based gurus and experts are also usually shown in this format. This does save a lot of confusion. ----- Original Message ----- From: David <mailto:totakeke...@yahoo.com> To: U.S. Metric Association <mailto:usma@colostate.edu> Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2009 9:07 AM Subject: [USMA:43625] 24 hour time What are the changes of the United States adopting 24 hour time instead of the AM/PM thing? Would there be some kind of law (which would probably occur after metrication) or would it just be one of those things people just adopt? What about date standards? I would like to see America start using DD/MM/YY instead of MM/DD/YY. What does it take for a country to adopt a date/time standard? _____ Windows Live just got better. Find <http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/134665375/direct/01/> out more! -- Stephen
