As my colleague wrote " We will have another meeting regarding XX dated 22 Oct 2011" , I told him that I’ve never read that they have used "dated’ for an upcoming event. All I read and heard was when an event happened in the past then in writing we say " regarding our meeting dated 01, Aug,2011, or referring to your memo dated 12,July,2011. To be on the safe side I’d write “we will have a meeting on 25,Oct,2011”
So, can “dated” be used for an event in the future?
First, in everything I’ve ever seen when someone writes a date as “day month year”, they don’t put commas inside the date. So you would say, “I received your memorandum dated 12 July 2011”, not “I received your memorandum dated 12, July, 2011”. If you’d rather use the “month day year” format, you would say "I received a memorandum dated July 12, 2011. Second, I wouldn’t refer to a meeting as being dated anything at all, whether it’s in the past, the present, or the future. A memorandum (or a note or an E-mail) actually has a date on the top of it. A meeting happens on a date, but I wouldn’t say that it’s dated sometime. I would say, “We had a meeting on 12 July 2011”. If you’d rather write in the “month day year” format, I would say, “We had a meeting on July 12, 2011”. The same thing is true for meetings in the future. However, your office may have its own style for these things that they enforce on all employees.
I’d suggest “scheduled for” for a future meeting, or “on” for a past/current one. I agree that “dated” refers to things that have a date written on them.
“We will have another meeting regarding XX dated 22 Oct 2011” would confuse me, because my first instinct would be that “dated 22 Oct 2011” means that that was when he wrote it, not when the meeting was scheduled for.
As others have said, “dated” isn’t used for an event, period. It means “marked with a date.” It can apply to communications, records, and the like, or to manufactured goods (e.g. date made or date sold), but I’ve never heard it used to refer to an activity or event. You can talk about minutes for a meeting dated [whatever date] but it’s the minutes (written record) that are dated, not the meeting. A meeting is not dated, in U.S. idiom anyway. Is your colleague in or from a different country?
Even if it’s technically correct, which I don’t think it is, using “dated” when you can simply use “on” is just bad English. For that matter, having the year included for a meeting just a week or two away is also unnecessary. OMIT UNNECESSARY WORDS.
“We will have a meeting about widget production dated November 10, 2011” sounds stupid.
“We will have a meeting about widget production on November 10” sounds better, has no less meaning, and is shorter.
Thanks for the comprehensive reply. Putting comma between the items of a full date was a bit hasty. Question was focused on " can we use “dated” for future event". But I’m afraid your reply failed to satisfy my question. In the meantime I appreciate helpful info inside the message about dating.