And of you are the secretary of a committee and you name the files that hold the minutes as minutes_2009-03-10.doc etc, they will always present themselves in chronological order.
_____ From: owner-u...@colostate.edu [mailto:owner-u...@colostate.edu] On Behalf Of Bill Hooper Sent: 10 March 2009 16:33 To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:43638] Re: 24 hour time On Mar 10 , at 5:07 AM, David wrote: I would like to see America start using DD/MM/YY instead of MM/DD/YY I can't agree to that one. The ISO preferred arrangement is YYYY-MM-DD so that the numbers are in a logical progression from large to small, just like our number system. (Also, in the ISO format the hyphen is used instead of the slash). Thus, just as the number 7248 means 7 thousands plus 2 hundreds plus 4 tens plus 8 units. so also, the date 2009-03-10 means 2009 years 3 months and 10 days (possibly followed by hours, minutes and second, as needed thus: 2009-03-10 13:15:00) Note, too, that a four digit year is used. The silliness of shortening the year to just the last two digits has been amply shown by some of the confusion that occurred when we went from the 1900's to the 2000's. Let's not perpetuate the problem until we move into the 2100's. (Aside: The practice of shortening, say, 2009 to '09 reminds me of a question I asked in grade school when my teacher was teaching us the abbreviations of the months of the year. I asked her what the abbreviation for "May" was. She told me, anyone who needs an abbreviation for "May" is simply too lazy to be bothered with. So also I would say, anyone who feels the need to shorten 2009 to '09 is just too lazy to be bothered with. end of aside) I also agree with John Steele that, until there is some uniformity in usage is obtained, substiting a three character alphabetic designation for the month is desirable (even if not really standard). That, plus insistence on using all four digits in the year, would make this: 2009 Mar 10 impossible to misinterpret no matter what other format would be more familiar to anyone. Regards, Bill Hooper Fernandina Beach, Florida, USA ========================== Make It Simple; Make It Metric! ==========================
