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American Date Format?!?
Why do Americans prefer the MM/DD/YYYY date format both in written and spoken?
usability - USA date format best practise - User Experience Stack Exchange
Why do Americans write the date as mm/dd/yyyy rather than dd/mm/yyyy or yyyy/mm/dd?
I believe it’s because of how it’s said colloquially in conversation. I.e. When is your birthday? “It’s August 3rd, 2018” then becomes 8/3/2018.
So the more proper English Empire/Commonwealth answer being “The 3rd of August, 2018.” Which tracks to 3/8/2018.
Would be a good follow on question for folks who speak other languages to find out if the language dictates/matches the formatting or not...
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My Operations Manager pulled me to the side today to talk about a little issue.
I've been dating all of my paperwork using ISO - well apparently I've been doing things all wrong because of this.
People look at my "foreign dating method" and are confused and then somehow do not understand any of my content.
It has been requested that going forward I date all my paperwork with an "American Date format"
sighs
How come US is the only country that uses Month-Day-Year data format more than other formats? I look at the list on Wikipedia and while other countries use this format, they also use other formats as well. It seems like most of the countries are influenced by US. Canada especially.
Why do Americans in general prefer this format both verbally and orally? What is the origin behind this preference? Isn't it easier to say it in ascending or descending order? What makes saying the month first so special? I'm asking this as somebody who grew up with MM-DD-YYYY. A lot of people from other countries tend to get confused at times with this format.
Each format has its pros and cons.
Nov 20, 2020
Pros:
- Truly unambiguous.
- Requires less interpretation; better readability.
Cons:
- Not as easy to compare multiple dates.
11/20/2020
Pros:
- Easy to compare with other dates to calculate durations.
For example, how many months apart are2/1/2020and8/1/2020?
Easier to calculate than "Feb 1, 2020" and "Aug 1, 2020".
Cons:
- Requires users to know the context in which the date is presented in instances where the date could be understood differently.
As a rule, when I'm developing, I alternate between the two formats you present depending on one criteria: whether or not it is important for the user to be able to quickly compare multiple dates. If so, I'll use the numeric representation, otherwise, I'll use the more readable abbreviated form.
Option (a) is much easier to understand as it's unambiguous.
10/11/12 could be read as 10 November 2012 or 11 October 2012 for example.
Why risk it when you can choose an unambiguous format?