So why do Americans (and possibly others) have their date reading month/day/year?
In England, and I guess most of the world(?), the date is writen day/month/year. In order of importance i spose.
So Anyone know why this is so? And more importantly why does it bother me so??
It is for the same reason that we use inches and feet instead of the metric system… because everyone knows that we are better then everyone else 
How do the English (and others) respond when they are asked the date? Do they say “Fourteen November, Two Thousand One”?
Here in the U.S. one would say “November Fourteenth, Two Thousand One”. Since we say the month first in full sentences, it makes sense to me that we enumerate it the same way (11/14/2001).
I think it should be “YYYY:MM:DD:HH:MM:SS.nn”. My not so humble opinion.
Not all do. In the military, it was in this style: 14NOV01
Aarrggghhhh bitten by vB code! That should be "YYYY:MM:DD:HH:MM:SS.nn"
Personally I don’t mind either way. If you give American dating a chance though, it’s not unlikely that you find one particular date you really enjoy. Maybe you’ll keep coming back to that same date, over and over, writing it everywhere you go, thinking about it constantly. Soon, you’ll be committed, ready to stick happily by that date 'til the day you die. Forever after you will remember, lest you forget and find yourself thrown out into the street and sleeping in a gutter.
Funny, when I was in teh military, I picked up writting the date as YYMMDD, e.g., 011113 is today, though I do recall seeing it writting the way Oicu812 details.
I do the YYMMDD dating too whenever possible. For example, I organize my computer files this way so that if I have a number of files with similar titles, they will be in date order and it will be easier to find what I am looking for. A typical file name might be: 011113 Lecture Notes.
No, this would be very rarely used. “The Fourteenth of November, Two Thousand and One” or “November the Fourteenth, Two Thousand and One” would be more likely responses.
As long as we’re picking nits, “and” indicates a decimal point in speech, at least here in the US. (i.e., nine thousand two hundred fifty-six and twenty-five hundredths) Therefore, “Two thousand one” would be considered the correct usage here.
Note that we lazy (or efficient, depending on POV) Americans for better or worse have shortened the phrase, “The Fourteenth of November” to “November Fourteenth”, thus saving us two words. Maybe it’s for economy, or maybe it’s just because we is just so durn stupid that we’d forget what we was sayin’ otherwise. 
Perhaps the Mods might move the thread to GQ, as you might get better answers in the more serious forum…
Let me take a stab at it:
“It is well known that currently dates (in the Gregorian calendar) are expressed in several different ways in various countries. For example what the British write as “8/3/96” the Americans write as “3/8/96” and the Swiss as “8.3.96” or “08.03.96”. As daily life becomes more internationalized (and web users quickly note that information is available from all parts of the globe) one may find oneself reading documents in which different date formats are used even though the documents are in the same language. When one reads that something occurred on “3/8/96” one may be left wondering whether it occurred in March or in August. Life would be slightly easier if dates were expressed in a common format.”
http://serendipity.magnet.ch/hermetic/cal_stud/formats.htm
Try reading that page, my head is just dizzy trying to figure out the date formats we use which are major complicated 
Just for the sake of completeness, in the UK this would most likely be: [ul][li]nine thousand, two hundred and fifty six point two five, ornine thousand, two hundred and fifty six and a quarter.
[/li][/ul]
I only consider using the latter form for simple fractions (i.e with a denominator less than 10 - even us Brits wouldn’t say nine thousand, two hundred and fifty six and thirty one fifty eights :)).
However, it is not quite as simple as that. When refering to someone’s age I would say “they are six and a half” and would never use “the are six point five”.
On a related note, we have the great Stanley Kubrick and NASA to thank for the way we say 2001.
Cecil also mentions it briefly in this column.
Here in merry ol’ Sweden the standard way of writing the date is YYYY-MM-DD. I guess soemone planned things correctly a long time ago.
I’ve only lived here for a coupel of years - are there any Swedes out there who can say how long you have been writing the date like this for? Was it since you brought in the personnummer?
I think it’s because of the way we say dates - today’s date is November 15th, 2001, and that’s how I write it.
I think putting the month first also makes organization of files easier.
Truth is: We do it just to be different. 