Why do North Americans write dates the wrong way around?

[Mike Gayner]

Americans (and Canadians I think) write their dates month-day-year. It seems illogical to me - it doesn't follow order of granularity like most of the world (day-month-year). Why?

 

[coldmeat]

Uh, no. I do it dmy.

 

[HannibalX]

Because we rule the world.

/thread

 

[zCypher]

Huh? What is a north american?

I live in the geographical location commonly known as Canaduh, and I don't write dates in any particular manner. At work, the system is usually year-month-day. I've seen various ways to write it, but none have really bothered me.

Most people don't even read the damn tickets before reassigning them anyway, so who cares what the date is.

Connection is not working properly, IP address is incorrect -> yet, they will reassign the ticket saying please access their system remotely to fix the issue. Yeah, no problem. I'll just magically access their system even though their connection doesn't work.

 

[Leros]

Its how we talk.

We say "March 10th, 2009", not "the 10th of March, 2009".

 

[guyver01]

month / day / year seems more natural.

do you speak and say today is the twenty-first of novemeber in 2009? or do you say today is year 2009, twenty-first day in november?

i say today is november twenty-first, year 2009.

 

[mugs]

Because it matches the way we say and write unabbreviated dates - November 21, 2009.

Neither day-month-year nor month-day-year is any more logical than the other; they both make sense for different reasons, and they're both less ideal than other alternatives. ISO standard dates > *. 2009-11-21. Unambiguous and sortable.

 

[ChaoZ]

Because we hate international standards.

 

[HannibalX]

Huh? What is a north american?

A person originating or living in... let me think real hard... North America?

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winnar!

 

[dbk]

FWIW, in Korean it's month (&#50900 -day (&#51068 -year (&#45380 as well

 

[Leros]

월-일-년 for life!

 

[JM Aggie08]

Because the other side of the world sucks.

 

[HardcoreRobot]

unless you use yyyymmdd you have no reason to talk shit

 

[olds]

Because every place outside North America is a third world country. Now piss off.

 

[Colt45]

dd-mm-yyyy

 

[Crono]

I like year-month-day, as 2009-11-21, but I'm used to month-day-year.
It doesn't matter too much which system is used.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Date.png

 

[FeuerFrei]

'Cuz that's how developed nations do it.
Those *cough* undeveloped places haven't gotten it right yet.

 

[El Guaraguao]

FWIW, in Korean it's month (&#50900 -day (&#51068 -year (&#45380 as well

those are some rad graphics, man!

월 - looks like a guy with no legs, sitting on top of a number 2, about to push a button on the wall.

일 - Looks like a ball about to hit a wall on top of the number 2

년 - looks like some kind of locking mechanism to hold the accelerating skateboard from sonic 2, remember that shit? it was on the flying air ship stage near or at the end? as a kid, i lmao ditching tails on that skateboard, lol.

 

[Mike Gayner]

'Cuz that's how developed nations do it.
Those *cough* undeveloped places haven't gotten it right yet.

See the post above yours, Einstein.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I hate that form of date. I always write mine with the name of the month in there somewhere.

If there was a set standard (imo it should be day/month/year) then it would not be so bad, but there is no standard, everybody seems to do it their own way. So what if you have something like 3/1/8. Is that the first of March 2008, or is that the 3rd of August 2008, or heck, maybe they meant the first of august 2003. Sometimes the year is 4 digits but not all the time.

I always use something like Nov-21-2009 and it avoids confusion.

 

[Colt45]

They sometimes use roman numeral for the month in parts of east europe.. I always liked that. Harder to fuck up.

21.XI.2009

I've had people give me shit for writing them like that though, Because they're too fucking stupid to read roman numerals, and yet they are (were) my boss. Awesome.

 

[TridenT]

I try to write it out like Nov 21, 2009.

 

[FoBoT]

i do it navy style

Military Date Format

The military uses a specific format for dates, again to eliminate any possible confusion or misinterpretation. The date format is in three parts:

The day of the month
The month name, often abbreviated to three capitalized letters
The year using the last two digits or four digits if the month is spelled out in full
As an example, September 4, 2005 would be expressed as 4 September 2005 or 4 SEP 05. The month abbreviation is always the first three letters of the month, usually capitalized.

 

[FeuerFrei]

'Cuz that's how developed nations do it.
Those *cough* undeveloped places haven't gotten it right yet.

See the post above yours, Einstein.

Ze map? Guess that makes the rest of the world 'developing.'
The way the US does it is the natural, sensible way.
We don't use the 'rest of the world' as the standard of right or wrong.

 

[Scouzer]

I don't even know what way I do it... I never write dates like that. Our date format at work:

0911212339

That's the current time/date.