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16 March 2026
2026-03-16
16 03 26
16 03 2026
04:28
16 March 2026
2026-03-16
16 03 26
16 03 2026
04:28
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...
More on reddit.comSo day / month / year is used in American English after all? 🤔
Why do Americans prefer the MM/DD/YYYY date format both in written and spoken?
formatting - Do American users also confuse the day and the month in dates like 01/02/2013 - User Experience Stack Exchange
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Every other country writes the date as either dd/mm/yyyy or yyyy/mm/dd, both of which make sense because they're going from either smallest unit of time to largest unit of time or vice versa.
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...
Ironically, a student in the US is in the "fifth grade" not "grade five" like in Canada and the UK.
Except for holidays - "4th of July" or "Cinco de Mayo," etc. - we usually refer to the date as [Month][Xth] so that's the way it shakes out in data gathering.
Now lets talk about the whole expiration/expiry thing...
I bought this from a Belgian (I think) online store that sells American products because I wanted to taste these famous peanut butter cups and I was surprised to see the dates like this. So is this date system also used in American English after all? 🤔
BTW, it doesn't seem to be a European imported version of the product.
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.
I don't have a pointer to published research - but in my experience US folk will always assume the US MM/DD/YYYY format unless they are knowingly using an non-US site, and are already aware of the potential differences.
If you have to use numbers only then the format that causes least confusion across cultures in my experience is YYYY-MM-DD since it differs from both "defaults" and doesn't suffer from any assumptions.
That said using an abbreviated three letter month name is only one extra character - the size argument for using numbers is usually bogus.
Please see ISO 8601 (eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601)
yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss
First, this is simply the largest to the smallest unit. No other argument--no matter how tightly held--can seem to overcome this logic.
The 4-digit year removes any confusion as to what the other numbers represent--even when the hyphens are left out. (Use of a 2-digit year--in any order--cannot always establish anything.)
I discovered this dating schema decades ago looking at a Star Trek calendar and saw that stardates were yyyymm.dd (Note: I was looking at calendars--not Star Trek stuff.)
I am an American with a mild dyslexia. I saw (or perceived) just enough dates that were written "backwards" that I could and can never remember which order we are expected to presume they mean if the days (or years) are also 1-12. (I also eschew the " / " as these make the date look confusing.)
I use year-month-date both with and increasingly with out hyphens or spaces; and day, year month date where the day and the month are spelled out. This is by my choice--the ISO 8601 just gives me a fallback argument--in case I ever need one.
NOTE: Some software programs might use, eg, "mm" for minutes, "MM" for month in numbers, and "MMMM" for the month spelled out; "hh" might mean 12-hours and "HH" might mean 24-hours. All of these codes within their own software are subject to the whim of the programmer(s).