Completely trivial

by Chris Bertram on March 1, 2004

I still have a childhood memory of our teacher pointing out that the date was 6/6/66. Tomorrow, at one minute past midnight, in those (sensible) countries which represent dates as day/month/year, the time and date can be represented as the sequence 00:01/02/03/04 .

{ 14 comments }

1

Andrew Boucher 03.01.04 at 12:08 pm

Last year my fourth child was born on Jan. 2 2003 (1/2/3). Destined to be a mathematician!

2

Nevin 03.01.04 at 12:40 pm

The month/day/year vs. day/month/year argument is silly. The only format with a logical justification is year/month/day — thus ensuring that alphebetical order is the same as chronological order.

3

des 03.01.04 at 1:00 pm

The only format with a logical justification is year/month/ day – thus ensuring that alphebetical order is the same as chronological order.

My alphabet she is broke! Where please I can get alphebet with also numbers?

4

Nevin 03.01.04 at 1:55 pm

When I said “alphebetical order”, I was thinking of computer files. Your computer is capable of “alphabetically” ordering files that have numbers and letters mixed together.

But it would have been more accurate for me to say “numerical order is the same as chronological order”.

5

digamma 03.01.04 at 2:43 pm

I concur with Nevin. Year/Month/Day.

However, when writing, I prefer to avoid any trans-Atlantic confusion and write the name of the month, or at least its 3-letter abbreviation. The effort of writing “Mar 1 2004” really won’t kill you, and I’ve always found month and day names pretty.

6

sennoma 03.01.04 at 4:07 pm

I’m with nevin and digamma. For my own work, I use year/month/day — all my data files generated today, for instance, will be 040301.filetype. I use this format in my notebook as well, but everywhere else I write “March 01 2004” so as to avoid confusion. (My notebooks have a big warning on the front page about the date format for anyone wishing to follow my expts.)

7

Matt Weiner 03.01.04 at 4:13 pm

Hey, can’t we start an argument over the 24-hour clock, too? In non-civilian America 00:01 is not a possible time….

8

Matt Weiner 03.01.04 at 4:14 pm

The civilian U.S.A., I mean.

9

reuben 03.01.04 at 4:59 pm

Apologies in advance for the hangover-induced muddiness of what follows (oh to be able to write clearly the day after the night before):

I think the American style (month/date/year) is a better communicative device than the date/month/year style, and certainly more than year/month/date. (I’m speaking strictly of conversations & written communications here, not personal filing systems.)

I don’t know any of the theory or terminology behind this, but it seems to me that listeners (and certainly readers) are usually active, in the sense that they don’t just sit their waiting for you to get to the end of a sentence or word or idea. Instead, they take each little bit as a clue, and actively try to create the word or story or sentence or whatever as you go along. Thus when I hear you say “whe-“, I don’t just sit there and wait to see if the next sound out of your mouth is an “r” or an “n”; I use context and common sense and prior experience to guess what it will be before it comes. As soon as you open your mouth, my brain is trying to predict what you’re going to tell me; otherwise, conversation would have to move much more slowly.It works similarly with dates, I would imagine.

With the month / date / year system, the bit that is usually most relevant comes first. As an example, if you tell me that you’re going to central Turkey for a holiday, you’re not going to start by telling me the year. I can usually assume that unless you tell me otherwise (or we’re having our conversation in December), you’re going this year.

If the year is too large a chunk of time to be relevant to a lot of these sorts of exchanges, then the date is too small – or at least too small to be the first bit of information you give me. On the example of the holiday in central Turkey, if I ask you when you’re going and you write or say it in date / month order, the date doesn’t really tell me anything useful until I know the month. “The 13th”, for example, happens twelve times a year, so not until you tell me the month can I mentally place your holiday. If you start with “August”, I can instantly begin visualising you in the hot and dry climate of summertime Turkey. If you say January, though, I can start wondering if you’ll be skiing or snowboarding. In each case, the specific date might then be relevant – but only if something else is informing it. Eg, if I happen to know that there’s a big festival in Ankara on the day after you arrive.

If you start with the number, I have to kind of just let that information sit for a minute until I know the month.

And if you tell me only the date, that’s because the month is understood.

10

Adam Rice 03.01.04 at 9:56 pm

The MDY order, that seems to be used only in the USA, strikes me as the least useful–and I’m an American. The year seems like an afterthought to the conversational way of giving the date “March first….uhh, 2004.” I also name my files pretty much the way sennoma does, and YMD ordering is the standard in Japan. And, for whatever it’s worth, the Universal Postal Union prescribes YMD, with the month given in roman numerals to set it apart. You never see this on American cancellation marks, though.

11

Adam Rice 03.01.04 at 10:05 pm

Oops, no, the UPU prescribes DMY

12

Motoko 03.02.04 at 7:28 am

November 9 changed everything.

13

momo 03.02.04 at 10:54 am

November 9 changed everything.

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA

14

Jane Doe 03.04.04 at 1:54 am

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html

International Standard ISO 8601 specifies numeric representations of date and time. This standard notation helps to avoid confusion in international communication caused by the many different national notations and increases the portability of computer user interfaces. In addition, these formats have several important advantages for computer usage compared to other traditional date and time notations.

The international standard date notation is

YYYY-MM-DD

where YYYY is the year in the usual Gregorian calendar, MM is the month of the year between 01 (January) and 12 (December), and DD is the day of the month between 01 and 31.

Comments on this entry are closed.