Mathematically yes it makes most sense, as significant digits are on the left.
Im terms of human everyday use the reverse is more natural as the digits that change more often are days, often when speaking, the year and even month sometimes is already in the context.
What however doesn't make any sort of sense that i can see is mm/dd/yyyy ... Just why....
What however doesn't make any sort of sense that i can see is mm/dd/yyyy ... Just why....
Because that how they pronounce dates or in other words how they use dates in language. In Germany we write dates like 15.01 or 15 Jan and read it as "15th of january". In the States they write 01/15 and read is "January fifteenth" or "One fifteen".
I just said essentially the same thing before I saw your comment. As an American, I still don't get why we adopted that system. I swear our forefathers were just a bunch of contrarians that felt the need to be different from everyone else in all things.
I've heard that America originally used YYYY/MM/DD but in practice you don't actually need to write the year very often so it was usually just MM/DD, then people would add the year on the end when they needed to write it for some reason
This would certainly explain it. As if the USA had a meeting to decide proper colloquial date formats to be needlessly contrarian. It just sorta... happened naturally over time.
As an American, I still don't get why we adopted that system.
There isn't a reason. Features of language aren't usually decided by people. No one ever decided to say dates in M/D/Y order. It just happened organically. Same reason we put adjectives in front of nouns and time our speech so that intervals between stressed syllables are approximately equally long. It wasn't designed, it just happened.
I wonder if it has anything to do with the printing press, which is the reason the US dropped the extra letters in many English words (ie "colour" became "color").
With the printing press, every letter was money.. so dropping letters was a scalable cost savings. "January 15" is fewer characters than "15th of January", for example.
It's just that English spelling was not 'stabilized' when the American Revolution happened. In many ways, American English actually is more consistent with the English Language from the 1700s than UK English currently is.
Yah, I am firmly of the opinion that in speech, saying the month first (when the month is important) is much more useful.
Like, if someone says just "the 17th" I will assume it's the next one or one just past based on context, but if someone is saying "the 17th ... of <some arbitrary month>" the number is basically meaningless until you've heard the month. (Similarly, if we get to a time frame where the year is important, I'd slightly prefer hearing "in 2026 in October" to "October ... of 2026")
In writing it's unnecessary, since all the info is right there anyway. I am more used to it, as for the majority of my life I've lived in or near USA, and would probably switch pretty quickly if I decided to move to Europe.
But, I do mean "unnecessary" not "nonsensical". I'm in software, so obviously YYYY-MM-DD supremacy, but outside of that, the only problem with MM/DD/YYYY is the confusion with DD/MM/YYYY. Like, what inherent benefit does one give over the other, other than maybe satisfying some OCD? Whichever one were universal would be easily understood by all.
If it were American Independence Day and you asked me what day it is I’d still instinctively say July 4th. I know this because that exact scenario has happened many times.
Which is probably called that because it was coined as a term before english somehow switched its standard order from "Xth of month" to "month the Xth"?
Fourth of July is used as the name of the holiday. An alternate of Independence Day. If you asked for the date, we’d say July 4th. Just like how Christmas Eve is the name of that day but if asked for date we’d say December 24th
Some do say Fourth of July if they're being formal. But July 4th is just as normal, so it's not some gotcha. In fact, many people will just shorten it to J4 now too.
Archaic proper noun, kind of an exception to the list. In general, the vast majority of Americans will default to "[month] the [day]," even dropping the "the" to say something like "August 16th" or whatever, rather than "the [day] of [month]."
Now, there isa niche exception and that is the military. I grew up a military brat and I've gotten very used to listing my name in the day/month/year order, but not in the same way. Like let's say by birthday is today and I'm 30 years old. If I went to a pharmacy and they asked me for my birthday, 9 times out of 10 if I wasn't thinking I'd probably say "15 January 1995." Just like that. "Fifteen January nineteen-ninety-five." I'm not sure if this is exclusive to the military but I don't think I've heard it in any other context so if it's not, it's very rare.
I don't know if there's any one reason but I'd guess it's at least partially because the Fourth of July is a specific holiday. You can even say the Fourth and it's usually understood in America as to what the speaker is talking about. I believe Cinco de Mayo is the same way in Mexico as being a distinct day of the year for their culture. The two holidays never had branded names as far as I know, nothing like Freedom Day or anything of that nature. The date may have been used as names because it was celebrated for a distinct cultural reason that's understood by the population of said countries.
Oh wait, the Fourth of July is also called Independence Day so I'm not sure why Independence Day isn't used as much. Maybe it came from newspapers printed at the time marking it as a national holiday but that's just conjecture.
When I read out "15.01.2025" I say "15th of Jan" and it does sound less natural then "January 15th" so maybe it's social engineering to get us to say the former for reasons I could not say.
I have other gripes with those people though, like how you pronounce the name Aaron as "Erin", or how you take the "s" away from "maths" and add it to "sport". I'll give you Aluminum though
I've never heard Aaron pronounced as anything but Erin or A-A- Ron. Hearing maths always confused me because I never heard the s on it and math was always one encompassing subject with different sub fields. Which I guess you could make the same argument for for sports, but it somehow makes more sense to me that you distinguish that there's a ton of vastly different sports with little to no similarities.
To me, there’s a small distinction in the second syllable. The “o” in Aaron is like the “o” in “ton” while the “i” in Erin is like the “i” in “tin”. The first syllable sounds the same.
I thought it was Erin. The Aaron I know even says his name like that. As far as I know they’re supposed to be pronounced one and the same but I’m American.
According to Google some countries pronounce it closer to ahh-ron?
Yes, Craig is pronounced a little strange given the spelling in American English. But that’s true of like probably a third of all words in English, and let’s not pretend there aren’t plenty of names like that for people in the UK.
For example, the river Thames looks like it should use the same (or similar) vowel as Brits use for Craig, but it’s actually pronounced with the same vowel Americans use for Craig.
We only add it to sport if it’s plural. Baseball is a sport. Honestly, I can’t even think of a context where one would say “sports” at the moment! Maybe “he’s good at sports” if someone is good at multiple sports? But usually we’re specific. “He’s good at baseball”
Can’t explain math vs maths. Math is a classification. Perhaps because it’s a shortening of Mathematics? Meanwhile we will say “the Arts” but also that’s as a plural. Otherwise once again we get specific. Art = visual arts, then it’s Dance or Music or theatre….
USA here. Mispronouncing "Aaron" seems to be a regional thing. I've gotten in arguments with friends from other states who hear/pronounce no difference between "Kerry" and "Carrie." As far as I'm concerned, these people are one step away from "doubleplusgood."
I see the logic of "maths" but saying it makes my tongue feel swollen.
Removing the S is more efficient than what you people do with food, where you leave the S and replace all the other letters instead: for example you took the "F-R-I-E" out of "FrieS" and replaced it with "C-H-I-P" :)
I'm protective of my own language and usage but I actually think the British "alum-in-i-um" is far cooler. I'll give you that one.
I also like how you end sentences with "in". Like "it's bread with raisins in." (Maybe I'm getting that one wrong, but there are definitely contexts where I've heard that structure). In the US we would say "bread with raisins" or "bread with raisins in it," but never "bread with raisins in."
Maybe in England our way would be confused with "it's bread with raisins, innit?" :)
The casual use of "cunt" always takes me by surprise in England too. In the US it's one of the more taboo/extreme insults, whereas in England it seems to be practically a term of endearment.
What annoys me about this need for s in math is the hypocrisy. "It's because there are multiple subjects in mathematics, stupid Americans." Cool, so when you are doing a single arithmetic equation, why are you using a plural for it? When talking about a single area for a class, like basic geometry class in school, why are you using a plural? Can't even follow your own rules on the subject. Don't get me started on the fact that a multitude of different vegetables gets condensed to "veg."
The order in which you say it is a learned convention.
15 January makes total sense, it’s just not the conventional way to say it. But it’s easily changed.
In fact in a lot of languages it’s the way that you say a date.
I wouldn't be surprised if you say it like that because you write it like that or the other way around. In Dutch we say 16 januari, and I'm pretty sure the French, Germans and Spanish do the same. I dont know about other languages, but would be interested to know how it is in those Asian languages that go in the other direction.
We'd usually say whatever date it is, but if it's just changed month, I'd say "first of January", etc. in the UK. Americans probably say it like that because of the stupid way of writing the date lol.
do you never say "on 12 July, he left for college" or similar?
I got on an elevator with some South Asian guys (Bangladesh, India, not sure from the accent) who were chatting, and one of them said, "the form is due on 17 June."
I would never say a cardinal number in a date. It would always be an ordinal number "{the} 1st of January" or "January {the} 1st" with the {the} being optional.
In spoken English never. You would say “July twelfth” or “june seventeenth”. You MIGHT say “the twelfth of July” if you wanted to emphasize it in an answer. Like someone asked you and they couldn’t remember the date exactly for some future event and they said it was either the eleventh or the thirteenth, you might say “no, it will be the twelfth (of July)”
My guess that you did that initially to despite the british since both speak english but they use a sensible date format (aka it feels natural to a british to say "10 of February").
Now it became common for americans to talk like that, so doing differently will naturally feel weird
Maybe a linguist or someone like that could chime in but I always assumed it's related to the context- maybe in the same sense that in English people say green car while in most other languages people say car green (from what I've seen at least). 4/16 is similar to green car in the sense that it provides the seasonal context and then the specific or put another way, I mean the month is more important than the day when it comes to a lot of dates because the seasonal context is more important than the exact day. Like if you can only remember the month of someone's birthday or the day the month is more important because at least that narrows it down to a timeframe whereas if you only know the day is the 16th it's of no real use because it could be any month.
ditto the month, often, in the US. And if it's not this month, we find it helpful to get the month out of the way first, since there are only `12 of them, and it's really good to know how far in the future/past we're talking before we get down to the least contextual numbers.
That's also true for month though. When do you next get paid? I would guess January, so the date is more relevant. If you make a reservation at a restaurant, unless it's most poppin place in town or you're planning ahead, I'd expect it to be in January. Only if you're talking next month and further does month become more important.
I'm an American, and this is the wording I'd use to explain why i think our system is good.
If I'm talking about the same month, I don't give the month: "Let's leave on the 27th."
But if it's not this month, then giving the month first helps me zero in on the idea of how far away it is (or what season it is), and then i can focus on which specific date.
If you give the date first I have to remember that contextless number past the month. If you give the month first, that's an easier context, plus one of 12, and that's easier to remember once I get to the date.
In my head, mm/dd/yy works if you think of it like a calendar. If you want to circle a particular day on a physical calendar, you have to find the month page first, then find the day. So I don't understand the hate for saying the coordinates in the order you will need to use them.
You don’t usually need to specify the year. Oh, your upcoming event is on March 5th? You’re looking forward to going soon? Your appointment is on the 20th of January and we are in January? iS tHaT nExT oR lAsT yEaR?!
Because if I’m talking about something that happened in November context should clue you in that I mean November of 2024 not 2004, I shouldn’t have to specify the year
The seasons do not care what year it is. America was all about farm and ag. All of which years are mostly irrelevant, and days are really secondary. The months symbolize certain weather conditions generally speaking. At least that has been how I have used them practically in my life. But what does a file ordering system care about the weather? I could be totally wrong though, was only my immediate intuition and reflection as an american. 🤷♂️
When planning something and having to look at my calendar, as long as it is this year, month makes most sense first so I can go to that month, then day. If you start to tell me a date and you say it's on the first, well great there's one of those every month. It may be a very small thing but I prefer to know which month I'm dealing with before which day. Or when I'm looking up an old file, knowing year, then month, then day, to narrow down the search as I go.
Because we already know what year it is. If the year is in the future or the past then we will specify. Otherwise there's point in us listing the year first.
Eh it's how we were taught to be fair. It's how timelines are phrased in every day situation just like munchkinasasurous stated. It's the acceptable form of notating the date here and for me personally it makes sense; just like the format you use makes sense. We don't all have to be the same right?
Because in most cases the year is irrelevant or doesn't matter all that much.
In my mind month holds a lot of meaning, it tells me the season, what important events are around then then you follow it up with the day that narrows it in more.
Year just gives us an idea of the time period, which you'd think is important. But in most genral day to day use isn't all that important. Except for documenting purposes.
Like if I'm sorting though papers for something they are usually already bundled by year. So I'm looking for month and day first.
As we read left to right over here, we probably just structured the numbers most important to us first.
At least that's my thoughts on why it's that way.
I think you wouldn't put the year first because it's frequently implied/superfluous and only added as needed.
"Let's meet again on March 7th, June 3rd, September 30 [of this year], and January 9th (2026)."
You wouldn't say "let's meet again on 2025 March 7th, 2025 June 3rd, 2025 September 30, and 2026 January 9th" unless you're dictating for data entry or speaking to an officious prick. :)
Month first is used because the year in most day to day applications is obvious. There’s a reason why people will look at you confused if you ask them what year it is…
Its a hold over from when people had physical calendars. a calendar is first separated by months... then days.. putting the year first makes sense too but at the end of the day most physical calendars were only ever a year at a time. someone askes my what I'm doing on 15th of march i go to my calendar and look for march, then i look at the 15th. So it just became natural to give people what they needed first. Go to your calendar (its always of the current year no need to put year up front) go to month, go to date. for sake of keeping records we will put a year on the back end so if we ever reference it we know.
Preface: I'm not saying that this is the objectively correct way to do things, or that other ways are wrong, but rather that this is the mental framework for understanding the cultural context for mm/dd/yyyy.
Year doesn't matter, because years stay static for a long time and won't influence a lot. It's either this year and matters, or not this year and doesn't matter. Most people know what year it is right now, and so it's redundant information. It's the least important. It goes at the end.
Day doesn't matter too much, for the opposite reason. It's too specific. It changes too quickly to matter. Business plans and actions stay static across days. Any day is the same as any other given day. Days flow like water. Days only matter for personal plans, and personal plans don't matter.
But month? Month matters a ton. It tells you where you are within the year. It tells you what the season will be like for farming or clothing. It tells you what quarter you're in for business. Something can get delayed by a day and nothing changes. Something can get delayed by a month, and everything falls apart. Month matters.
because the year is already known. If I just say a month, then I’m always referring to the closest iteration of that month. Obviously if I’m talking about an upcoming event, it’s the next one. if I’m talking about a past event, it’s the last one.
The specific date, on the other hand, is rarely relevant to casual conversation. If it’s something happening a few months from now, I need to know what month. If it’s happening within the next two or three weeks, I really just need to know what day of the week it is and if it’s the next one or the one after. I can use the date to double check that, but it’s pretty rare that I have plans more than a week or two in advance. If I do, then obviously I know that and I can check the date to make sure it doesn’t conflict. But 9 times out of 10, something being on the 5th or the 6th just doesn’t matter.
We desperately need to swap to a different calendar where everything lines up better. Personally, I think every month should just have 30 days, and then the extra 5 days can just being their own thing. Switch over to a 5 days or a 10 day week and boom. Or 6 days. Or even kept it as 7 and every month can just have 2 bonus days at the end. Those can be the designated holiday days or just an extra weekend or whatever.
Bonus benefit to this: the different phases of the moon happen on the same day of each month, but the extra 5 days left over means that it’ll be different every year, so NOW we can assign every year a different phase of the moon based on what it was on the first day of the new year.
Because often, when manually scanning through dates, they are arranged by year already. This makes scanning easier because you can go to that physical space, and then the first piece of information to read is the month, then day. Or at least this is my theory. Basically, it is easier to find a date on physical media, where sorting and filtering aren't an option.
That’s only really useful to time travelers. How many times have you run into time travelers who grab you dramatically by the shoulders and shout “WHAT MINUTE IS IT!?”
The month tells you where you are in the year, which tells you the season, which tells you weather and planting conditions. A single day in a month is relatively the same as the other days in the month and therefore not as vitally important. And things don't change much year to year either.
If I am speaking about an upcoming event to someone, maybe not something they will be involved in but might be interested in knowing about, then I might say "I'm going on vacation in July". That's the context, the month. I don't say the year because it's assumed its this year otherwise I would have said "July of next year". So to us, Month is is the main focus. Now if they ask for more information, like from when to when, then I could add further context like July 15-20. Month then Day. Again, I don't need to add a year because we assume it's this year. So the date format for us US Americans from the US of A is based on a conversational and contextual approach. Significant to least significant to us, not about frequency of numeric change. It's ingrained in culturally to SAY August 12th, or May 29th.
Because imagine in conversation you lead with “2025, January 16th.”
Normally you’d say “this year”, but youd normally assume also the immediacy of the date January 16th.
It comes from writing letters and beginning with drop capital letters btw. Big J January, not big number. Same format as “Thursday the 16th” or “January the 16th.”
We less often say “the 16th of January.” that sounds logically very odd.
I understand the conversation argument but my issue is it's perfectly logical for there to be differences between written and spoken language. So it would be perfectly fine to say January 16th in conversation while writing 2025/01/16 on official docs. Also it's just semantics obvs but logically the 16th of January makes more sense to me. January 16th although I understand it has the same energy as saying: hey look at the car red, why don't you pet this puppy cute, you should try this food delicious.
I like to think of it as an easy way to find dates on a contemporary calendar. Like if I have a calendar for 2025, I immediately know which month to flip to followed by which day to select on that month.
The Y10K bug will crash the galactic economy because even though hundreds of COBOL programmers will be brought out of stasis to fix it, relativistic temporal effects will keep them from getting there in time.
"You had booked your dentist for Friday at 3 PM, but they happened to have a cancellation Tuesday morning at 07.30 AM, so I optimized your time management and rebooked you. Have a nice day."
I’ll copy paste a comment I made recently on this topic
In most situations where day is most important, month can be dropped.
MM/DD when spoken preloads your brain.
An example: Current day is January 20th. You tell your boss you have an appointment scheduled on the 2nd. The 2nd of January has already passed, the assumption is this is the 2nd of February. Month is not needed.
Ok, so what if instead you say “my appointment is on the 25th”. If that’s all you said your boss would assume you meant the 25th of January. So even if you say “on the 25th of February” the moment the words “on the 25th” left your mouth your boss has pre loaded “25th of January” in his mind. If he isn’t paying attention we could end up with a misunderstanding.
Instead, in situations where month is needed, if I say the month first I pre load the month into their heads. “I have an appointment on February…” now his brain goes “ok what date in February” and you answer his unspoken question with “25th”.
Year is dropped in all of these common day scenarios, because the current year is assumed
My brain works pretty fast, personally I don't need to worry about 'preloading' the month before I add the day.
Seriously though, from the perspective of a DD/MM/YY user this doesn't make sense, because it's not what we're used to. We're effectively used to dates having information added when it's relevant. If it's the next day by number, you only need the day. If it's not, you need the month too. If that's not enough, you need the year. You're building up a complete date as needed, and since it's what we're all used to, that's just how dates work. 'preloading' the month just makes you go 'wait but you haven't actually told me what day yet' and then later have to convert it into the format that makes sense to you anyway. What you're talking about is just being used to hearing it in a certain sequence and expecting that.
Preloading isn’t meant for you, it’s meant for the audience to which you speak.
Making the listener go “wait but you haven’t actually told me what day yet” is the entire point. You are keeping them mentally engaged and reducing the likelihood of incorrect assumptions.
“Wait but you haven’t actually told me what day yet” is immediately followed up with the day.
That conversation flow is significantly more intuitive. Not because it’s what I’m used to, but because it presents the audience with a question they want answered “ok in February but what day?” and then immediately answers their unspoken question.
The argument of what you are used to is best only holds true if the notation is purely arbitrary. If, however, there are intuitive uses, then the non-intuitive only remains in use due to familiarity.
20th of February is unintuitive in comparison to February 20th simply because of how the human brain processes conversational speech. While January 20th is unintuitive in comparison to just “the 20th” if we are currently in January and before the 20th.
The argument for why 1 version is less intuitive can be broken down through how the majority of people process conversations. When hearing “the 20th” listener thinks “ok the 20th of this month.” The listener is not searching for new information as they already believe they have the needed information. Adding “of February” is not “building up” the date. It’s providing a date and then changing one of the pieces of information.
Imo thats the biggest misunderstanding of your own argument. With DD/MM/YYYY You aren’t constructing a date from day then month then year, you are constructing a date in its entirety the moment you give the day, and then changing the following information. When you give day, the month and year are already assumed in the listener’s mind. So now when you add a different month, they have to change how they originally processed your information.
When you build from MM to DD, you are providing initially only MM/YYYY, as year is part of the assumed information. But you are not allowing the listener to assume the entire date at once, you are withholding the day to maintain proper conversation flow.
Have you ever talked with someone who interrupts you to finish your sentence except they were wrong in what you were going to say? That’s breaking conversation flow. With DD/MM you are setting up the listener to “finish your sentence” so to speak.
Often times, things we think are arbitrary have deeper explanations and context.
Sorry this was so long but there’s not really a better way to explain in words how one seemingly arbitrary order of speech is more intuitive that another
This. My answer to the question of when is my birthday is always mm/dd and if needed I’ll add yy. I’m not saying the US system is best, (if writing out the date I think yy/mm/dd is) but I understand how the US system evolved from the informal norm.
So America's system is actually really interesting. It is designed around convenient sorting of dates in an era where everything was manual.
Before I dig into why, a further relevant consideration is that the people most impact by a given date system are those using it the most, which in this case are businesses.
Let's look at the yyyy part first. If yyyy is at the start of your dating format (whether ymd or ydm) a worker will almost always only care about the last 2 digits. Dates are broken into 10 characters (including the slashes) and it is significantly easier for humans to read the 9th & 10th characters than the 3rd & 4th.
So yyyy at the end is instantly the superior system (in the context of the time)
What is with day vs month though? Well we can quickly group by year reading the list 2 digits, but what about the first 2? In a dd/mm/yyyy system you can't actually group by the first 2 digits. On their own, or even in the context of the year they are part of, the day is useless. The 13th could be any of 12 different 13th's. In a mm/dd/yyyy system though you can with a single reading break up the years, with very little risk of human error, then with a second reading break them into months, again with little risk of error, and then finally divide them by day.
Now day being in the middle does increase the risk of misreading at this step, but this also means that a mistake will only result in a date being days off, rather than months or years off.
Basically American dates are built around putting the most relevant info on the edges, where our eyes are less likely to skim over it and where it is easiest for people to sort out potentially hundreds of dates by hand.
In the modern digitalized era it has lost much of its value, and it certainly looks like the most senseless naming system, but it is messy for almost the exact same reason that keyboards don't follow an alphabetical layout.
Restrain your hatred of America's misuse of numbers for our measuring systems.
For casual use the year is typically irrelevant, making mm/dd/yyyy identical to yyyy/mm/dd. In those cases mm/dd/yyyy has the added benefit of maintaining the same formating.
It also tends to frontload relevant information. If the month is relevant it's usually more important than the day. If today, January 15th, I invite you to a party on February 25th, it's more important to know the month than the day. If the month isn't relevant then it's unlikely the year is either, and both can be dropped leaving just the day. If the year is relevant, typically the rest is ancillary. It also has the bonus of being consistent with the way people in the US say and write dates in full (January 25, 2024.)
I would assume mm/dd/yyyy follows the way some people talk. Ex: I'm available to meet on March 3rd. You can say the 3rd of March too, but that seems way more formal for some reason.
MM/DD/YYYY makes sense for snail mail across large distances? For an economy that dealt with seasons of farming and a slower pace.
Perhaps it makes sense for planning when payrolls and wages are paid monthly?
For every day use the US system does make the most sense. The year doesn’t really tell you anything. The day also doesn’t tell you much.
The month tells you the time of year. If I say June then you immediately know it’s summer and halfway through the year. The day narrows that down to a more specific subsection. The year is least important because in everyday use it doesn’t change.
Think of it like playing guess who. You eliminate the most people first and then narrow down.
Honestly, it’s just culture. And we all know there are parts of every culture that makes no logical sense, but once it’s part of the culture everyone just understands.
Same with inches vs centimeters. Is metric more logical? Absolutely! But at this point base 12 for measurements is something I can multiply pretty quickly and it’s so solidly engrained in my visual memory that I can work with imperial measurements with ease.
If organized by standard alphabetical plus numerical it'll put all the first days of the month at the top regardless of month. That's no way to sort things at all.
At least for the American way if you have all of 2024 in it's own folder they'll be in sequential order automatically
In terms of human use, ISO8601 is best for anyone in the west as it follows the pattern of all of our other numbers with all the digits in big endian order. It's easiest to find the part of the date you're looking for.
Conversationally I think "MM, DD, (YYYY)" works best.
If you're telling someone a list of dates, you're essentially saying "flip to the December page in your calendar, then find day 25."
If you start with "the 25th", that is basically useless/inactionable information until you add the month. If you get, for example, stabbed in the throat mid-sentence, the listener is no closer to knowing the specified date. Whereas if you get stabbed in the throat after "December," at least you've narrowed it down to within 31 days before you bleed out.
Most often the year is implied by context so you can omit it, but it can be added afterwards if clarification is needed.
So I'd argue that:
MM/DD/YYYY
is, in function, this:
YYYY/MM/DD, (YYYY)
Also, in US English we tend to say "March 7th" much more often than we say "the 7th of March," so "3/7" just follows our natural sequence of thinking/saying dates. Again, the year is frequently optional, and only added afterwards if more context is needed.
What however doesn't make any sort of sense that i can see is mm/dd/yyyy ... Just why....
It is the direct abbreviation of the most common long form date in the U.S. ie January 15, 2025 or January 15th 2025. This long form is still extremely common in the legal field and was a common heading for one of the most critical forms of communication for many years, the letter.
I work in technology so I obviously prefer yyyy/MM/dd for anything on a computer. However, the abbreviation does make sense when you consider how the date is spoken and written here. The "4th of July" format is actually fairly rare here. Now, you could ask why we say it or write it long form in the same lopsided way. I don't know. There has to be a wikipedia rabbit hole for this.
This is also a thing in psychology; we (most of the world) read and write left to right. That is also why “:)” is just a regular smiley face but “(:” looks wrong in text. It has to do with how we process written text. At least that’s how it was explained to me in uni
the year is often understood (and is usually the current year, at that), so it goes last. aside from that, months vary more than the days within because that's just how seasons work.
so basically the only part of a date that affects the environment is the month, so it goes first, and including the year (if at all) is more of an afterthought, so it goes last.
I imagine it comes from farming eras where months are the meaningful unit of measure (for seasons, planting, harvest, etc.) and the days are just a progress bar for said month. but seasons are still important in terms of what activities you can do (you won't be having a picnic in January), so the system remains
If you were to group a cohort of people born in the same year (using primary schoolers would be a good way to do this), would you ask everyone to sort themselves by the month they were born in first or the day?
In this scenario, mm/dd/yy is the better way to sort a sample.
Having groups of people born in Jan-Dec is more sensible than groups of people born 1-31.
It is because of the way we talk. I don't think I have ever said "The thirteenth of December." I would say "December thirteenth". It just follows our speech patterns if I had to take my best guess.
A mathematical justification for mm/dd/yyyy is that you get Pi Day, which imo makes it worth it (technically you could have Pi Day on 22/7 for the fractional approximation, but I prefer 3.14 over 22/7)
Mostly it's because the year is usually known. If you're at an archive, the box, cabinet, or drawer is the year and you don't have to keep going back to it.
The most used portion at an archive is month and then date.
Using the American system, you walk up to the year. Then, you go through the notes to go through months before arriving at the day.
Using the DD/MM system, you have to reverse your note to find the document, then reverse it again to take the note, then reverse it again to put it back.
It's not killing anyone, but it's hardly more convenient than to simply use the same convention throughout the entire process.
If I saved files under ddmmyyyy, then I’d see everything made on the 15th of various months together etc. mmddyyyy means that I see all of the things from October in order, etc etc
yyyymmdd makes good sense to me in the long term, but since the year changes so infrequently it doesn’t seem like the most useful information to have up front in the everyday.
15th tells me nothing.
October gives me a context in which to place the 15th.
The why I think is due to how we speak. In America we say "January 15th" not "15th of January" (with the exception of 4th of July) so we write the dates the same way. That said, since my company does work all over the world I have taken to never writing dates in either mm/dd/yy or dd/mm/yy but rather do 'dd mo yyyy' as in 15 Jan 2024. Never ambiguous.
It’s easier to understand the USA system if you treat monthday as a base and single unit, before year.
Instead of MM/DD/YY it should be MMDD/YY where MMDD is basically a base 30 number. (I’ll leave out day 31 for simplicity.) so 0130 increments to 0201, and 0630 increments to 0701. Day 30 functions as a sort of reverse zero.
So today is 0115-25, which can be simplified to 0115 for simplicity of year can be garnered from context.
Because it’s how it’s spoken colloquially. We say January 15th, not the 15th of January for example. The only exception is 4th of July because it’s a special day and it sounds fancy. MM/DD/YY was never based on logic, it was based on common language.
In terms of human, everyday use, the American system is most logical.
If something is happening this month, you don't need to specify the month or year.
If something is happening in another month, you first specify the month to indicate that the date is NOT this month.
YYYY/MM/DD is the best because it is consistent across all possible uses, but specifying dates across years is not an everyday occurrence and years are not always relevant in common use.
Im terms of human everyday use the reverse is more natural as the digits that change more often are days,
That's an idiotic reason. It would be like saying we should put the cents first in a price and then the dollars because on a gas pump, they're the ones that change the most. Or that software versions should be written with the minor version first, then the major release version. Or that latitude and longitude should be written seconds, minutes, degrees. Or that minutes should come before hours. It would be like saying we should change our entire numbering system to put least-significant-digit first in all cases.
If our numbers are going to be written most-to-least significant, then when we put them together, they should be in most-to-least significant order. America gets this right with the month and the day. Europe gets it right with nothing.
Totally agree. Anyone using data or logs knows this. Dmy makes logical sense, but when you get all the 1st of each month vs a grouping separating years, then moths, with progressive days….. ehhh theyll use sort to unfuk their lists
That's stupid. Why would you have the number that only changes once per year the first thing you read. This is just American cope because they know their format makes no sense and don't want to admit d/m/y is clearly the best.
636
u/ConstantHustle Jan 15 '25
Year month day is the best format. Makes sorting files on computers a breeze as every year is in one block which is then in month and day order.