I’m sorry but it doesn’t make sense TO ME. Based on what I was taught, regardless of the month, I think what matters first is to know what day of the month you are in, if at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of said month. After you know that, you can find out the month to know where you are in the year.
What is the benefit of doing it the other way around?
EDIT: To avoid misunderstandings:
- I am NOT making fun OF ANYONE.
- I am NOT negatively judging ANYTHING.
- I am totally open to being corrected and LEARN.
- This post is out of pure and honest CURIOSITY.
So PLEASE, don’t take it the wrong way.
As an American it was just what we were taught. However, when I started creating code and being pedantic about organizing files by date, I now prefer YYYYMMDD format as it is, chronologically speaking, superior when prefacing files with it. In this case, in my opinion, it’s better to have the year and then month first prior to day.
To each their own, variety is the spice of life.
ISO is my true north.
What you say is interesting. Having a way of organizing time that suits your needs. That’s why I asked if there was any benefit in the way Americans (and apparently also Chinese) represent time.
This. I usually use MMDDYYYY when I’m dealing with other (US) people and ISO standard for my own stuff.
Because the month is bigger and provides more context on it’s own. You figure out the month first then place yourself within that scale.
Example:
“It’s May (immediately tells us the context of 31days, spring, etc.) It is the 30th, so there’s one day left in May”
Vs
“It’s the 30th (provides no context except that it’s not February). it’s may, so there’s one day left in May”
So both lead to the same conclusion, the first way just gives the limiting parameter/most context first.
Similar reasoning why the month is the primary separation on calendars.
Another example that follow this same principle, you tell time HH/mm to provide the larger context first, not mm/HH.
you tell time HH/mm to provide the larger context first, not mm/HH.
Except not everywhere does, at least in speech. Half past ten. Quarter to eight. Five past three.
Although in the US I suppose you do say ten thirty, and seven forty-five? So at least you are consistent!
This pretty much sums it up for me, knowing the month first conveys a lot of information. Then the specific day gives more precision, year you can often assume but it’s there in case it’s not what you expected.
The short answer is, it’s what we were taught in school. Like many preferences, it’s shaped by the culture we grow up and live in.
I’m sorry but it doesn’t make sense to me.
Of course not, you were raised and live in a different culture; so, your preferences are different.
Ultimately, the right answer is ISO8601. It’s unambiguous and sorts well on computers. But, I don’t think any culture is teaching that as the primary way to write dates, so we’re stuck with the crappy ways.
There is an American subculture teaching and using ISO 8601; the US military. They don’t call it that, but I learned later that’s what it is. They enforce YYYY-MM-DD on all documents.
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That’s not a good explanation for the question, because the convention was established before computers.
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YYYYMMDD is the only correct answer.
Am American and I hate the MM/DD/YY(YY) format. Unfortunately its what’s been taught and used as the standard date format for a long time.
I much prefer the ISO standard of YYYY-MM-DD. It’s the superior format logically moving from the largest calendar unit to the smallest. Also superior for date ordering files.
Yeah, I resently saw it and I agree with you.
It’s two less syllables to say “April Fourth” than “The Fourth of April”.
That’s about the only advantage it has.
Edit:
I was thinking about this grammatically. English is an Adjective first language where the modifying adjective goes before the base noun.
In my example, April is the adjective. It tells the reader what kind of Fourth it is.
It’s at least a kind of logic.
Understandable.
FYI, I added more in the base comment.
MORE understandable, Thanks.
ITT: defensive answers and ISO-8601 supporters.
Yes, I didn’t quite calculate how controversial the topic would be, my bad…
I think the clear answer is that there is no real reason other than habit and sunk cost fallacy.
See also the metric system, A4 paper, and daylight-saving time.
I’m not Mexican, but this reminds me of a Mexican ranchera that says “No cabe duda que es verdad que la costumbre es más fuerte que el amor” (There is no doubt that it is true that habit is stronger than love).
I think the clear answer is that there is no real reason other than habit and sunk cost fallacy.
There may have been some historical event that lead to this convention dominating over others (though I don’t really know where to start lookin)
Most significant digits first. You write the thousands place before the hundreds, you write the month before the day. Of course, the whole argument is blow away when you write the year at the end instead of the beginning. (ISO YYYY-MM-DD dates for the win.)
Most significant digits first.
That would only make sense if the US wrote the year first, but they don’t. They just seem to slap the date together in a random order
I think that’s context relevant though. If we think about when dates are most frequently used (news, business, planning) it’s typically within the year (or month will give context).
That added with the fact it’s not uncommon in some situations to just provide month/day.
That being said, I don’t think either is better or worse. Just a preference kinda thing, unlike the issue between metric and imperial units.
little Endian entered the chat.
It comes down to the variable weather in the US versus the UK.
The UK has maybe handful of weeks of actual hot weather, months and months of rain, and then some weeks of bitter cold. The day is more important than the month who cares if it’s March or September? It’s another day of rain and grey.
The US has extreme weather changes across the year, especially in the northeast where differences in US and UK English first began to diverge, intentionally and unintentionally. In a state like Massachusetts, knowing the month is important for things like setting the scene in letters “home” and so forth. The summer months and grossly hot. The fall/autumn is full of brilliant colors and mild weather followed by months of bitter, unrelenting cold winter. The spring months yield to green and mild weather again. Knowing that the month is April is very important because the 4th of April is going to be incredibly different from the 4th of September.
Source: Link
You little shit
LOL OK, thanks for the laugh regardless.
Year is the most significant (read: big) unit in the list, but it is the least significant (pertinent to daily life) unless you’re a time traveler. Of month and day, month is more significant than day in both size and pertinence, so it gets ordered first. But when sorting things into folders or file naming conventions, biggest category descending down to smaller categories is always the best.
You articulated what I was thinking, better than I could have. This is it for me.
I’d add that there’s probably a lot of habit involved, plus the fact that everyone else does it.
So not only am I not used to saying “today is the 4th of May”, everyone around me isn’t used to hearing it either and might think I’m being weird.
Hello, have you heard the good word of our lord, ISO-8601?
It solves the problem ;P
Yes I did! And it seems like my savior!
Idk, maybe like all U.Sians traditions, this was an Old-World British thing Americans preserved, since it’s a more direct term of the English language, more direct than Day then Month
so unless it’s a special day, if not holiday, for U.Sians like 4th of July, by default, Month then Day
Generally we say June 1, not 1 June or 1st of June… So 6/1 makes complete sense.
For anything “official”, like a work spreadsheet, I’ll use ISO format YYYY-MM-DD for clarity and ease of filtering/sorting.
Who is “we”? Americans? I usually hear Americans say “June 1st,” not “June 1.”
We meaning USAians, since we’re the kinda the only ones who use Month-Day
It’s just an example. We say June first, that’s why we write 6/1
My guess is the month is most relevant to an agrarian society. It tells you where you are in the growing cycle that the entire culture revolves around. The day and year offer little practical utility to a 19th century farmer.
Oh, that make more sense and seems plausible! Thanks!
I don’t have a clue why we do MM-DD-YYYY and personally I hate how dates are done in the west, to a degree.
For a maths course I’ve been taking at college, I never use MM-DD in my notebook because that and DD-MM are stupid in my opinion. I always spell out the month first to ensure I don’t get mixed up. I honestly envy that some languages like Chinese and Japanese have an individual character to help distinguish between month and day.
Also, I would love if every country using the MM-DD or vice versa format could all agree on which format to use for everyday things.
