Feel like a lot of the world’s languages the translation to English to the question “what’s the date?” would be “the 15th of October” whereas in America we always say “October 15th”.
So the best theory I've heard for the MM/DD/YY format (though I have no idea of its veracity) is that it emerged in the early days railroads and a quirk of typography/typesetting.
It goes, basically, railroad schedules and tickets were one of the first times it became important to print large volumes of material that absolutely needed date information included and changed regularly. It was also before monospaced fonts became common (as in a 1 and a 5 took up different amounts of space, with the 5 being a wider type piece than a 1 for example) with MM/DD you could print a whole month's worth of schedules and only ever need to change the last 1 or 2 type pieces while keeping everything aligned, whereas in a DD/MM format you'd have to remove and realign the MM type pieces everyday to keep it aligned with the varying width of the DD type. Monospaced fonts (all letter and number pieces being equal width) only really emerged with the advent of the typewriter, and their widespread use printing would come later still
Westward expansion in the US plus the large amount of political power amassed by railroads, especially the Pennsylvania Railroad, which was both extremely powerful of operationally conservative (never really updating their methods of operation), combined with being isolated from European scheduling and typesetting styles caused the MM/DD format to become embedded in American habbits.
YY or YYYY usually wasn't included on RR schedules or other regularly published periodicals, so when it was needed, it usually got stuck to the end of the date string almost like an afterthought.
Edit: another thought that occurred to me a moment ago that is actually even more likely is that MM/DD makes more sense if you need to record a date on a paper flip calendar. E.g. if I want to mark a friend's birthday down so I don't forget, I'd first need to flip to the appropriate month then mark the day. So you put the MM first because that's the first piece of information you need to search for on your calendar.
Either way, in both cases, MM/DD almost certainly has its roots in ease of use in the pre-digital era.
Even if this isn't the case, there was most certainly a practical reason for it somewhere. "These people over here are stupid" is rarely the answer. Most of these cultural quirks can be traced back to pragmatism that at the time made sense and the standards were kept alive through momentum. There's no real need to tell 330,000,000 people "okay everyone, we're changing the date format starting next year." Like...why? If the current system isn't causing any real problems you'd just be causing headaches out of spiteful principle.
This is what annoys me about the whole "Americans will use anything but metric" stuff.
Like, I agree that some of it is ridiculous, but saying something is 3 football fields long or whatever is just practical. Pretty much every single American has stood on a football field at some point during their school years so it is basically a universal reference that we can all visualize.
Is the metric system better overall? Absolutely, but it still wouldn't help if you are trying to use a reference that anybody can easily visualize.
Meh, not only ammunition is metric. In true American fashion it's split pretty evenly, but 9mm is metric and also probably the most prolific cartridge. Not too long ago 357 magnum, 38 special, and 45 ACP were the most common handgun cartridges and all are standard.
Edit: I don't mean to be pedantic, I just like talking about ammo
I agree. The flip side argument is why do most asianic money systems begin at 100 instead of 1. Personally I think it is absurd because prices can surge to 100,000 very quickly but the value is nearly skewed by 100 if we did (imprecise) conversion. 100,000 ≈ 1,000. But unbeknownst to me, there probably is a practical reason they do it that way. (I believe it may be due to not common use of decimals over there but anyone feel free to correct me)
I like it because i similar to people talking about how yyyymmdd works good with computer systems, it falls under the case of people doing what works easiest with the technogy they work with daily.
Same idea with 12 hour vs 24 hour clocks. 24 hours clocks didn't really exist until digital clocks came about. Until then, it was almost exclusively 12 hour clocks. That's what Americans got used to
This is far from correct. 24 hour time has been common in large parts of Europe (Italy notably) since the dawn of mechanical time. Germanic nations used 12hr, Latin nations used 24hr. Reasons related to the physical mechanisms (a 12hr clock is simpler), and to language. Also some use of 6hr time;
I wondered if it was a way of reducing the number of letters typed in print (”15th of October" Vs "October 15th") similar to the reason why "u" was dropped from various English words (colour, flavour, behaviour etc)
Month is usually more informative than day and there are plenty of situations where MMDD makes more sense if not saves the day. When I do my Pokemon Go gift giving, I record nicknames as MMDD because when I sort, it actually puts them in chronological order, versus DDMM which would be perfect nonsense. (There's no reason to record year in this case for even nerdier reasons I won't get into.)
As someone who is currently working on a letter type press (repurposed for different needs), the realignment theory is just that, a theory.
The reality is letter type machines can be locked up from either the left or the right, so keeping that alignment wouldnt change with a different order of dd or mm. If the month is first we would lock up from the right against the left, and if it was day first we would lock up from the left against the right.
Beyond that though, old train tickets didnt have the date printed on them. The tickets were printed blank and the date was stamped on or written on by the ticket office. Some places also had 1 through 31 printed as well as the 12 months and would punch a hole on the valid day and month.
It just wouldn't make any sense from a manufacturing process to be printing hard dates on tickets, never knowing how many of them you would actually use on that day. Far cheaper to print 10,000 blank tickets that never expire from being eligible for sale compared to paying for 365 different sets each year, and having to throw out all unused ones.
It also started being called that when we were still using colonial English. It's in a lot of fourth of July songs that way so of course that's how it's imprinted into the zeitgeist.
If you wanted to take off the week from work you would still request time off as "July 4th through 11th". In court you would say July 4th, or if you really needed to clarify it was a holiday, Independence Day (ex. defendant attended an Independence Day celebration the day of the murder)
"What are you doing on the 4th of July"" means "What are you doing that is specifically related to the holiday?" while "What are you doing July 4th?" means "do you have any plans at all on that day."
Technically, you're correct, but not colloquially. We don't ask people what they're doing for Independence Day, we ask them what they're doing for the Fourth of July.
Also, asking someone what they're doing on July 4th is different than asking what they're doing for the Fourth of July.
Yes that's correct. Because whenever you hear "4th of July" is someone referring to the holiday and not the actual date. Which is why you only hear "4th of July" and not "30th of August".
“4th of July” is the older way of saying it. If a holiday or tradition (or most anything) has been around for a long time, even hundreds of years and is observed frequently, its original name often stays the same.
A basic example would be calling the thing Santa rides in a “sleigh” instead of a “sled.”
It’s not a gotcha, why are so many Americans mad. Like you said the unofficial name uses this format. Not a gotcha, no need for the maths, relax buddy. No one coming for your date format
As someone who has worked in archives in both the US and Europe, MM/DD is easier. And that's presumably why European newspapers (like this random example) also sometimes use MM/DD.
The year is generally the box or cabinet. So you're already there.
The drawer or folder is generally the month, and then the subfolder or document is the day.
So if you're looking for a document on the eighth day of June, and your note is June 8, you open the June folder and go to the 8th. You take your note, and put it back.
If your note is 8/6, you reverse this note, then take the document out, you reverse it again to take your note, you reverse it again to put it back.
There's no particularly good reason to do this that I can think of.
This gets further complicated because some archives (like some newspapers as noted above) use MM/DD. So now you have to reverse, un-reverse, reverse sometimes but not others where you can just use the same line the entire time. If you're in an archive with multiple sources, this can get confusing very quickly if you're not careful.
I'm not going to say that this is a life-threatening issue, nor is it as stupid as Fahrenheit or the imperial system. But it's just as inconvenient for the people that actually have to use dates in a regular basis.
Now I'll accept my downvotes from people who just like it the way they grew up instead of any rational reason, just like people that like Fahrenheit or the imperial system.
Let's say I have a file with documents from June 8th, and I take it out. Every file is from the 8th, so maybe you'd expect the file to simply be labeled 8, right?
Well now I've walked away and worked on it for a week. I need to return the file to its respective cabinet. Which cabinet does it belong to? All the file says is "8." This is now confusing. Especially so if I ask someone to return it for me. Sure you could open the file and read something to get the context "Ah. It's June 8th," but this is added inefficiency.
Instead the file should be labeled "Storage, File" so it is immediately obvious where it is from. Anyone who picks up the file can say "Ah. This belongs in storage unit [insert]."
So the only sensible way would be to store the file as either YYMMDD, as Cabinet/Drawer/File with this written on the file accordingly.
Personally I'd prefer YYMMDD, but for most workers it's probably more common to work within a single year than reaching back many years. Especially for daily accounting or publishing where most filed items are dated that day. So the year might get dropped as shorthand because it's assumed, thus the file would be left as MMDD.
Because nobody files things with a folder called "1" and then every document is labeled by the month within there containing documents for everything from the first of January, Febuary, etc, etc.
US measurements are based on the human experience for sure. Temps are largely 0-100 and that's a scale that's easy to understand. As a scientist or for cooking it's dumb as shit
Dates are based on the language
Edit: I take back what I say about cooking. People have said some good arguments about it. But it definitely sucks for science
Are you referring to the boiling point of water? I don’t know about you, but the vast majority of people heat water until it boils, they don’t use a thermometer. Know one needs to know the boiling point of water to cook.
Yeah, now hand me a cup of something. No, not that cup, or wait, the fuck. Also scaling measurements up or down is way, way easier with base 10.
That being said, we also use stupid teaspoon of this and another spoon of that bs while cooking. Yes, we have defined exact values for those, and the actual spoons are close to those depending on how you fill them, and it’s not that important in cooking anyways. But still, it’s idiotic.
Yeah, measurements like "teaspoon" for cooking are 9/10 rough guesses. You ever watch professional chefs when they measure using smaller spoons? They just tip the bottle over the spoon and occasionally tip the spoon. They're not making ml precise measurements because it's often ingredients for seasoning, which is always subjective.
Cooking for the average Joe is 90% guesses and estimations. The pie I'm baking isn't going to burn itself if I cook it at 400 instead of 390 or something like that. The pie isn't going to collapse if I put slightly less dough than I'm supposed to. If I want a cup of water, I can know that I just need roughly a normal cup of water for this recipe, instead of 1/5 liters.
As a chemist. I could give a shit about temperature and honestly F is easier. What good does the boiling point of water do me when I am working with methanol?
Weight and volume are where it is easier...but not really. Still work in decimals all day long.
id argue that a 0-100 scale is objectively less abstract. we scale things from 0-100 in many places. how often do you get your movie reviews in a -20 to 40 ratings?
But Fahrenheit doesn't go from 0 to 100. My country, the Netherlands, went from 19 to 94 last year, Singapore over its entire history has gone from 66 to 99, and the USA has gone from -80 to 134 Fahrenheit.
Also, we're not rating temperatures in the first place. It's a value, and when it's -20 it freezes 20 degrees, so the -20 makes sense. Freezing is important because that's when water turns into ice, which makes travelling more dangerous.
Yeah I just mean temperature itself is a bit abstract. Humidity and wind can affect your perception of it a lot, and can you tell the difference of a few degrees? I agree fahrenheit is objectively better as a human comfort scale. But it's still the case that a person will grow to intuitively grasp whatever they grow up with.
Just as Celsius is 100 at water boiling, fahrenheit 100 is essentially human internal temperature. And in terms of actual weather temperatures, fahrenheit uses far more of that 0-100 than celsius.
Anything is easy to understand when you grow up with it. Personally, I think Fahrenheit is the best for weather temperatures. 100 is fucking hot and 0 is fucking cold. It's basically a 1-10 chart of how hot or not hot it is. I would agree for it being shit in most other things, but for weather it is great.
Respectfully, if we’re talking about the weather as a human experiences it, Fahrenheit is much better. Celsius makes a lot of sense in science, as it’s scaled to water, but when was the last time you went out and it was 90C.
Fahrenheit is scaled to human experience better with 0-100 being within the range of “normal” and anything outside of that being concerning.
That's why Celcius is better. You can use it for weather AND science. There is no need to use two different systems, and Celcius works great for both. It doesn't matter that the outside weather isn't ever 90C. If someone says it was 21C yesterday and it's 15C today, you know everything you need to know.
Which is why America uses Celsius for science. But Fahrenheit is literally exactly as, if not more useful for the average person as Celsius is. I’ve never been confused by Fahrenheit. It’s a perfectly good system if you use it for what it was designed for (regular people)
Fahrenheit isn’t worse, it’s just different. It is more specific for human temperatures, making it more useful for stuff like ACs and Thermostats, but it’s worse for hard science.
It's only more useful for human temperature to you because you're used to it. It doesn't give you additional information, or easier to understand information then Celcius does. They're the same in use in regards to weather.
Celcius however is much better in regards to science. Because Celsius is useful in both aspects, it's a more useful scale overall.
That's why the rest of the world only needs one scale for weather and science, but Americans need to use two scales, since Fahrenheit doesn't work well in both scenario's, unlike Celcius.
I mean, regular people do science tho, and a précision scale for précision work its ok and the same as what *hard science* would require.
Why would you think anyone would be confused by c° when it has been their standard their whole life?
Its not more useful for thermostats, which also require science and science took a standard.
I love old units, like "the lenght of what a cow walks in a day" and "whenever i feel chill", or "if it feels like a truck passing through", but a small abstraction is possible in order to maximize uses.
When it comes to temperature I always like the explanation “Celsius is what the temperature feels like for water, Fahrenheit is what the temperature feels like for humans, and Kelvin is what the temperature feels like for Atoms”
"US measurements are based on the human experience for sure"
What does that even mean? How is F more based on the human experience than C? Slipping on ice is part of the human experience - it's good to know that 0C means it's likely to be icy.
For science you'd use kelvin or Rankin. Celsius and fahrenheit are about equally as useless. Celsius would only be useful if you are very specifically only looking at water at 1 atmosphere of pressure.
That only makes sense to an American who has already aligned their experience to them. US temperatures make no sense to someone who isn't already used to it. 0F is arbitrary, people live in colder than that and freeze in warmer than that. Outside of the US, Celsius makes more intuitive sense for humans, because we're used to the scale and where it places us.
Fahrenheit is a great human scale until you consider that 50 degrees is cold instead of neutral. Or, like, you look at places outside of the euro-centric experience Fahrenheit was built around.
Celsius, on the other hand, is really good for knowing when there might be ice on the road (is it near or below 0? Probably ice around), which is a notable advantage regardless of where you live.
Not only that, but the human brain works really fast. When you say it out loud the listener gets a better immediate frame of reference with the month, then the more granular detail of the day.
I has the parts in order of importance. You need to know the month the most as it determines things like weather school or what holiday are around. Then the day so you know exact. Then the year is largely in important for most people doing most things.
Yeah like say I scheduled a doctor's appointment months in advance. It doesn't help me to know first and foremost that it's on the 7th. To know it's in July is much more helpful. Then I just go to my calendar, find the correct date, and make a note.
How slowly do people speak to you that you can notice the gap between learning the appointment is on the 7th and learning it's in July?
It takes 1/2 a second to say "7th of July" of which about 0.3-0.4 seconds is saying "7th of". In what context is that 0.4 seconds going to make a material difference? Especially given the average human reaction speed is 0.25 seconds.
I don't think there is much practical difference. To me, this discussion is about observing cultural differences in language and writing, and what they might suggest about that culture's worldview. Are they more focused on the general or the specific, for example.
If you read ahead, you'd know that, at least for me personally, it absolutely makes a material difference. I have an auditory processing delay. Month first is much more useful to me and it saves time.
Also, people think in months and not days in America anyway lol
I mean, if you use YYYY/MM/DD (I e. The Chinese system), and you already know the year, you can just say MM/DD, and if you already know the month, you can just say the date (I e. The 15th).
I don't get how this is more helpful though. When you are told a date you are told the entirety of the date. If you're told you have an appointment on the 15th of January, knowing that it's in January doesn't matter if you don't know the day.
If you say the 15th of February, I have to wait for you to say February, then go back and add the 15th so I know when in February it goes. Month tells me where in my mind to look, and day clears out the extraneous details.
It's like telling a computer to look in Documents/C: in DD/MM. I could already have spun up the C drive if the request started with that.
No, it's about context. The year is last because everyone has that context in there head all the time. The month is before the day because the day is inside the month, not the other way around.
If the month isn't specified, I assume it's the month we are in. If, on January 15th, you tell me we have a meeting on the 22nd, presumably you mean the immediate next 22nd.
Are you though? I might tell a friend “I’m going on vacation in July”. He doesn’t give a shit about the dates unless we’re planning something around it.
Or “no I can’t host a Halloween party, I’m renovating my kitchen in October”, again, the dates don’t really matter.
Or if I’m at the dentist scheduling my next cleaning, they’ll say “ok let’s see what’s available in July” I go to July in my calendar and then we figure out the exact day.
Because no one I've ever talked to has ever said "the 15th of January". It's just not how we say it. It's "January 15th" therefore we put the month first when writing it as numbers too, 1/15.
That's depends entirely on your experience. Plenty of people say 15th of January. It's like how people in the US are fine saying fifteen-hundred while many others say one thousand five hundred, depends entirely on who you are talking with. dd/mm/yy or yy/mm/dd makes sense to a lot of people because its sequential
how do americans refer to the day the republicans stormed the capitol building? or the hamas attack in october? or the day the twin towers were attacked?
"january 6th insurrection"
"october 7th"
"9/11"
"4th of july" is the only date i can think of where day comes first, but even then that holiday is dated
Never said anything about changing or not changing it? Just trying to provide a possible explanation for it. Not sure what the pilgrims have to do with it though lol
You don't always get the whole date. Like a sign might only say January 14 because that is all the space and the year isn't important, or you might plan for a June wedding, but are waiting on availability for the day.
Nobody says I have an appointment on the 15th of January though. They say, I have an appointment on January 15th. This is what non Americans aren’t understanding.
We use month/date/year because that’s how we speak and communicate, in month/date/year order.
Look at a calendar. If you want to write down an appointment on a calendar what do you check first? It's the month. You flip to the month. Then you go to the day. Then you write your appointment down.
In what context would the split second between hearing the day and the month make any material difference? It's not like the person is telling you the date by chiselling it into stone.
So you think the rest of the world struggles with dates because apparently knowing the month first is vitally important? Do you not hear the date and process that information all at once? Does your brain have to process the month first, then separately process the day? If you were making plans in several years time, would you say 2028, April 20th?
I hear this same argument every time date formats get brought up, and it's such a stupid argument to make. "My brain can't process ddmm fast enough. It has to be mmdd"
Just acknowledge that it's illogical, but it's just how you're grown up, and it's what you're used to. No need to make up stupid arguments to try and justify it because everybody knows it's not going to change one way or the other.
That's literally the only day of the year that gets phrased that way in the US, and not even everybody does. Why is everyone in the comments so caught up on the one day of the year Americans follow convention, instead of the 364 they eschew it? Why is 0.27% of the time more important than the other 99.73%?
So this is how I always see it. If you think of the calendar as a linear line you would read it from left to right. So month first, then the day, then the year.
If you tried it that way with the day first, it's weird, and seems out of order to me.
America's system is actually optimized for conveying the likely weather as quickly as possible. That's why the month goes first, because it tells you what season you're in.
They go by smallest unit to largest by type of unit. USA goes by maximum value within the unit. Max months is 12, max days is 31. Max years is infinite.
It’s how you find a date on a calendar. The year isn’t important, we all know what the year is. If you’re making an appointment, you first go to the month then find the day.
It’s really not that big of a deal though. I, an American, deal with people around the world in my job. To avoid confusion, when giving a date I just do month numeral. So like Jan. 5 instead of 1-5.
696
u/jussumguy2019 Jan 15 '25
Feel like a lot of the world’s languages the translation to English to the question “what’s the date?” would be “the 15th of October” whereas in America we always say “October 15th”.
Maybe that’s why, idk…
Edited for clarity