Ask Lemmy

I say June 2nd of 2025

I type 2025-06-02

Handwritten it's 2-June-2025

I'm from before 2000 and the turn to years being so small broke me, it used to be so clear which number was the year with just 2 digits, and day, month, year is sorting from smallest unit to biggest, it has logic. But then for awhile you could have a 04, an 05, and an 06 and I was working with other countries, it wasn't at all clear which was year month or day, so I started sandwiching the month in the middle as a word when handwriting dates and using 4 digit year, and year month day sorts like a dream for filenames.

I think it's just the way we talk. It's just more common for us to refer to a date in speech like "Today is June 1st". Whereas other countries would say "Today is the 1st of June". Neither is wrong, it's just how things are said.

They say it "June 1st", as opposed to "1st of June", so it makes sense to write it that way. That, mate, was a hard lesson to learn for me lol.

Anyone who doesn't use ISO 8601 is wrong.

Historically, I don't know, but personally, I prefer YYYY-MM-DD style dates since they sort naturally in basically all computer software without having to think about it.

I'm a fan of ISO-8601 which is YYYY-MM-DD. When context is known, dropping the year on something is fine (i.e. if I post a schedule saying 'summer 2025 schedule', I don't need to start every date on it with 2025). Japanese does this as well (and I think Chinese and Korean, but someone is welcome to correct me if I'm wrong there).

If the year and month are already known, just using the day is fine as well (a calendar doesn't write the full date in every square). Having it in that order makes sense to me.

MM-DD-YYYY is right out, though, so I only agree with the 'muricans on the MM-DD part.

There are plenty of other scenarios with a similar pattern of starting at the larger scale and then the specific.

TV shows: Season 2 Episode 9

Theatre: Act one, scene 3

Biblical: Book of John 3:16

Other books: Chapter 9, page 125.

Address: 123 Main St, Apt #2

Phone numbers: country code (area code) locality-individual

I'm not saying either is right or wrong, but there are precedents for either way.

I like it. Many agree that YYYY-MM-DD is superior. It also reflects informational entropy. Each additional piece of information narrows down the search space most efficiently.

But in normal conversation, chances are we’re talking about the current year. So it makes sense to skip the year, or save it for last.

Word by word, if someone says the month first, I’m already able to know roughly when this date is. Then the information is hammered out with the day.

If someone says the day first, it barely helps — could literally be in any month of the year. It leaves too much unknown until the next piece of information is received.

In normal conversation, it's more common (at least here) to say "May 31st" than "the 31st of May." I think the order of the numerical only dating system is just reflecting that.

Every digital clock displays hours:minutes:seconds. Largest to smallest. I see no reason not to follow the same pattern with the date year/month/day.

This is also how my phone time stamps a photo - year/month/day/hours/minutes/seconds.

This seems very logical to me.

I'm guessing, but it's likely because the spoken form for a date is normally, 'May 31st, 2025" vs "The 31st of May, 2025", hence 05/31/25 v 31/05/25.

I personally prefer yyyy-mm-dd, as the Japanese do, which also puts month before day. I think it's because they tend to prioritize history, so that makes sense. Year gives a historical context, month gives the season, while day is kind of arbitrary when talking about historical events. Day will matter most if I'm making short term plans, though, so I certainly see the appeal for day to day life.

Depending on what you're doing, one will matter more. Precision matters more the more fine tuned the situation.

Think of it like hours vs minutes vs seconds. If I'm just thinking vaguely about the time of day, hour gives me most of the context. If I'm meeting someone or baking cookies, minutes matter a lot more but seconds is a bit too specific. If I'm defusing a bomb? Seconds matter.

I'm sure the history is that, for most daily purposes, it was useful to know both. Knowing the larger element (the month) first sets the context for the smaller detail. For instance, saying I met someone for dinner on December 12 gives you the broader context (e.g. the season, possible relevant events) before the smaller detail of the day.

As an American I'm not really a fan of it mainly because it's different from the World standard. We are the only country that insists on doing it different. It would not be hard to change either. I would love for it to change but it's not something I'm putting a lot of time or thought into right now.

Because the month tells me more about how far in the future something is. If I have an appointment on the 12th of July, there's not much information in knowing it's on the 12th. 12th of what? But it's in July, so between 1 and 2 months in the future. If I need more info, then I'll pay attention to the day. So in order of information given.

Historical dates are similar, except I really just need (roughly) the year, and then a month if that's relevant. Knowing the exact date of a historical event is just showing off. But if you know the month, you know what season it was, what the weather was probably like. Was it planting/growing/harvest time? You can guess at a lot of things with just the month.

What is the benefit of either way. For reading or writing the burden is a matter of microseconds. For speaking it's still around a second, tops. So everyone communicates perfectly effectively.

Except of course when they don't, and then the ISO standards mentioned by others are the real fix. Or if writing, write the month as a word.

So both conventions are great except when they suck, and in those situations they both fail equally.

The US is the only one to do many stupid things, like imperial units

Legacy reasons

That's it

Because fuck you, that’s why

Why do you use 60 seconds in a minute and not an even 100? Why use randomly sized calendar months? Why do you say doce instead of diecidos?

It's inherited from a historic convention from the UK. Historically the rationale was that the month was more important than the year, so they put it first, although this has no useful consistency or order to it.

Unfortunately, kind of dumb decisions from the past tend to stick and keep existing for an unnecessary long time because people get used to them and then never change them. Popularity or habit can beat reason, objectivity etc...

I wondered whether maybe the us americans had continued using the old style and it was Britain that changed, but no: Britain appears to have been using the day-month-year order since medieval times. This latin letter from William Wallace from 1297 has that order: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Lubeck_Letter

*Given at Haddington in Scotland on the eleventh day of October in the Year of Grace one thousand two hundred and ninety seven. *

The latin line with the date starts with "datum".