Why do Americans put the month first in dates (and don’t say it’s better!!) - what’s the reasoning behind it? Who made the change, and when? What other countries follow suit?
Being a humble Brit working for a US-UK company, it’s a frequent nightmare making our UK (dd/mm/yyyy) dates match up so the US office can understand them.
I’ve searched all over the 'net and asked a fair few Americans, but no answer yet on the historical reasons for putting the month first…
We put efficiency ahead of all else maybe ?
You would say … “It’s the fifth of June”… 05/06
We would say … “It’s June fifth”… 06/05
Since the numerical system is probably based on how we actually say the date on a daily basis I would guess it is one of those minor language differences.
I’ve often thought it was all about efficiency too. Although there may be some history here too. What do other countires do? As I understand it most others use the modern British version. Looking at it (4 Aug 2000) I wouldn’t be surprised if it was something Napoleon came up with to make things simpler, like his metric system. You see with 4 Aug 2000 it goes from smallest to largest.
Perhaps we should have Cecil tackle it. Would you Cecil. Please.
When I moved to the states from Scotland, I found it weird too. It took me some time to not screw up the date…I think funneefarmer is probably right. That’s the only explanation I’ve been able to come up with.
After living in several countries I’ve given up on this whole issue. I just use YYYY/MM/DD now. It’s the least ambiguous, because nobody in the world uses YYYY/DD/MM. It also makes the most sense - numbers are usually written from most significant digit to least significant.
Jimuth,
If it’s any consolation to you, the US Navy, in its internal correspondence, uses the Day-Month-Year format; however, it does use Month-Day-Year for the “Naval Business Letter” format for external correspondence.
I think the United States and England deliberately try to be different from another by driving on opposite sides of the road, spelling certain words just differently enough to be noticeable, and, as mentioned here, writing dates differently.
All in one sentence…how 'bout that?
For the record, ISO standard is YYYY-MM-DD.
To avoid confusion I use three letter abreviations for the months or spell them out.
Well, that would work for 1-7 August, but for 8-31 August it patently wouldn’t.
I think what brother rat meant was that it goes from least significant to most significant. As opposed to our decimal numbering system which places the most significant digits first.
YYYY/MM/DD makes the most sense to me. And it makes comparing dates a lot easier to program.
Ah. My bad.
I’ve noticed an increase in the use of YYYY/MM/DD and DD/[month name]/year nomenclature in the United States.
As for the month-first traditional Anglo-American date nomenclature – I think it’s because the month is usually considered the most important aspect of correspondence. The date is an overly precise field, and the year is too vauge, so those fields are listed after the month.
The Brits have it better, but they do not have it “right”.
I suggest:
[day of year] [decimal point] [elapsed millidays {+ optional extra digits for additional accuracy}] [slash] [years since dawn of agriculture {an “official date” would of course be chosen}]
147.42426 / 9023
looks a hell of a lot nicer than either
4:10:56 PM 6/5/2001 AD or
4:10:56 PM 5/6/2001 AD
don’t you agree? (It’s also a hell of a lot easier to subtract or add a duration to a chronological point, or to work with time in mixed-data compound variables such as flow in volume per duration or acceleration in distance per duration per duration).
funneefarmer hit the nail on the head.
In America, if you said, “It’s the fifth of June” people would expect you to continue on, “and seven score oxen have all died in the same field…” like you’re the town cryer or something. It sounds way to formal. It’s always stated in Month xth format, so it’s always written MM/DD/YY.
All these years I thought that ALL the English-speaking countries wrote their dates MM/DD/YY. Ok, so my only knowledge of English comes via US, but still, I thought it was the norm, since it contrasted to the Spanish way of DD/MM/YY. I thought it was some standard language difference.
Interesting…please continue the discussion so I can become more enlightened.
AHunter3 - actually, astronomers already use a very accurate system called the Julian Date.
The days are counted from noon-to-noon and UT (or GMT) is used, so 15:12:54 EST translates to 08:12:54 on a new Julain day - divide that by 24 and you get 0.3423…
Advantage: all dates are positive, therefore avoiding the whole BC/AD (or BCE/CE, if you prefer) mess. Disadvantage: having to change days at noon is a bit inconvenient for the majority of us who sleep at night and are awake during daylight.
Ahunter and Philistine; I have to tell you that I fear that the time/date notation of Star Trek is heading in the direction of this conversation.
I think you may be right for history, but for other fields like geology who go back before the JD zero point they use negative. Of course they generally use a completely different system 1 mya (million years ago) But close enough.
I myself have tended more and more toward YYYYMMDD since I became computerized. It goes from largest to smallest units and, most importantly, it’s the only format that really works well for file sorting.
I agree that the American way corresponds to natural speech patterns. The only time I’ve actually heard any English-speaking people say dates like “6th June” was from people in former British colonies (India, Malaysia, etc.). Their use of English is much more formal and stilted than native speakers’.
The British preference (contrasted with American) seems to be to put things in logical order (well, some of the time, anyway; overlooking their frequently illogical attachment to quaint old stuff), while the Americans just deal directly with the immediate issue. When I was in library school, studying American and British periodical indexes, I noticed an important difference in how they were organized: the British indexes grouped entries according to their scheme of subject classification, while the Americans used a direct alphabetical lookup. The British method entailed looking up each item twice, while the American way needed only one lookup. The British method is fine for a leisurely, exalted philosophical contemplation of a subject area. No problem for a member of the House of Lords or an Oxford don. But an American would say:
<stereotypical Brooklyn accent>
Neva mind awl dat stuff, just gimme the info, but quick!
</s.B.a.>
Quant au continent européen, le format traditionnel est à écrire le numéro du mois en les chiffres romains, par example 6.VI.2001 — on lit cela “le six juin 2001.” Donc on n’y trouve pas de confusion sur quel numéro est la date est quel est le mois. C’est le méthode le plus logique, n’es-ce pas?