[QUOTE=Tastes of Chocolate]
Out of curiousity, if I were to ask you the day, WormTheRed, how would you answer me? Here in the US, I’d expect to hear “July 22nd”. Do countries/languages that write the date before the month also speak it that way?
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I can’t speak for Icelandic but e.g. in German spoken and written dates are exactly the same.
<ordinal day><month name> “22nd July”
or <ordinal day><ordinal month> “22nd 7th” (sounds a bit “technical”)
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
Right. The holiday “The Fourth of July” is on July 4th.
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And it is worth noting that the document which is the reason that day a holiday is dated as follows: July 4, 1776
[QUOTE=jayjay]
We do say 4th of July, but in that format it’s the unofficial name for our holiday of Independence Day, not the usual rendering of that date. You will occasionally find people saying “It’s the 12th of January” but it’s kind of rare. Our most often used format is “January 12th” or “May 26th”.
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This is the answer, but to clarify: US speech does not usually specify the year at all. So our spoken usage is logical, normal, and descending: M D. Because the year is optional, and because English tends to put the most important words at the front, the extra information goes at the rear: M D (Y), in speech as well as writing. Now it’s no longer logical, but it is understandable.
[QUOTE=Tastes of Chocolate]
Out of curiousity, if I were to ask you the day, WormTheRed, how would you answer me? Here in the US, I’d expect to hear “July 22nd”. Do countries/languages that write the date before the month also speak it that way?
[/QUOTE]
And my answer would depend upon the language you asked me that question in. In English I recon I would say July 22nd. But in Icelandic, Swedish and German I’d say 22 Júlí 2008, 22 juli 2008 and 22 Juli 2008 - respectively 
Even though it would be 08/07/22 in written Swedish.
[QUOTE=Anaglyph]
It’s just the way the date is specified in the English language, a convention that predates computers by far. Thus, indicating the date in the order of month-day-year makes it easier for English speakers to read, as they would otherwise have to mentally rearrange the order when reading it (July 22nd, 2008),
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I’m an English speaker and I’d say “the 22nd of July.” The answer that it simply conforms to the spoken date is still a non-answer. Why do Americans say “July 22nd” instead of “22nd of July?”
[QUOTE=Dr. Drake]
This is the answer, but to clarify: US speech does not usually specify the year at all. So our spoken usage is logical, normal, and descending: M D. Because the year is optional, and because English tends to put the most important words at the front, the extra information goes at the rear: M D (Y), in speech as well as writing. Now it’s no longer logical, but it is understandable.
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If someone asked you the date, wouldn’t you think the *day *was the most important information? (They probably already know what month it is.) By your argument the *day *should go first.
Today is the 22nd of July; for the record, I both write and say it that way. It’s more common in the UK than “July 22nd”, I’d say.
[QUOTE=1920s Style “Death Ray”]
I’m an English speaker and I’d say “the 22nd of July.” The answer that it simply conforms to the spoken date is still a non-answer. Why do Americans say “July 22nd” instead of “22nd of July?”
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I remember that being the convention in Britain, as well, although it’s been a while so my memory may be faulty.
Still, when in Rome…
I think it is a peculiar carryover from an era when folks would have said “six and thirty rolls” instead of “thirty six rolls”.
[As a database geek, I abhor months. No unit of time should vary its duration like that. Invariably someone wants to “add a month to this date over here” and then I have to explain that that’s a phrase open to interpretation. We should just say 209th of 2008]
[QUOTE=KneadToKnow]
And it is worth noting that the document which is the reason that day a holiday is dated as follows: July 4, 1776
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A few years ago the Wall Street Journal had an essay on the “American” method of dating things. It all boiled down to a single document, and you just referenced it.
[QUOTE=featherlou]
After working in a large cheque processing department for nine months, I can assure you that it really doesn’t matter what date format a country uses, as long as everyone is using the same one. Canadians, unfortunately, use every date format you can imagine (and some you can’t), even with all of our banks trying to force people to use a standardized date format. The down side of this is that banks can’t process cheques if the dates are ambiguous (is 9/7/8 July 9th or September 7th?). Even with date blocks printed on our cheques (in the format DD/MM/YYYY), people still refuse to use a standardized date format here. There’s a little insight into the supposed easy-going Canadian psyche that you might not have suspected. 
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I use the ISO 8601 date format (YYYY-MM-DD) on my checks and most other documents. It’s an international standard, so why not use it and ditch MM/DD/YY, DD/MM/YY, and other nonstandard formats.
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
Right. The holiday “The Fourth of July” is on July 4th.
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It seems to me that “4th of July” is used as a noun - the holiday name. When it is used as an adjective it is the other way “July 4th weekend” seems more common than “fourth of July” weekend.
As for the more general case, besides pure orneriness, the month is often more important than the particular day of the month. If that is understood, you drop the month, just like you drop the year in most cases. You already have the year fixed, month gets you to a particular month and day, if needed, gets you there.
friedo, why is month / day / year harder to handle in code than day / month / year? I’ve never seen a difference myself.
The best argument for the US standard that I can think of is that “July 22nd” is easier to understand than “22 July” because beginning with “July” makes it very clear that this is a date and the day of the month is following, whereas “twenty two” could be referring to just about anything ('My birthday is twenty two days after my sister’s" or “I was born on the 22nd floor”; you can make a lot of sentences where a month could follow ‘twenty two’ but doesn’t, but it’s hard to put anything other than the date after “My birthday is July…” )
Unfortunately, this doesn’t work so well when a year is added.
Of course, at least we get it right with punctuating numbers.
[QUOTE=featherlou]
Canadians, unfortunately, use every date format you can imagine (and some you can’t), even with all of our banks trying to force people to use a standardized date format. The down side of this is that banks can’t process cheques if the dates are ambiguous …
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Really? My understanding is that in the U.S., the date on a check has no real legal significance.
[QUOTE=Voyager]
As for the more general case, besides pure orneriness, the month is often more important than the particular day of the month. If that is understood, you drop the month, just like you drop the year in most cases. You already have the year fixed, month gets you to a particular month and day, if needed, gets you there.
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Absolutely. If I’m asked by a co-worker “What’s the date?”, I’m more likely to say “the 22nd” than to say “July 22nd”, because we both know it’s July.
[QUOTE=mks57]
I use the ISO 8601 date format (YYYY-MM-DD) on my checks and most other documents. It’s an international standard, so why not use it and ditch MM/DD/YY, DD/MM/YY, and other nonstandard formats.
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Hear fuckin’ hear.
I haven’t written a cheque in a couple of years, but when I get home tonight I’m going to take a look at my chequebook. If it’s true that they have date blocks with DD/MM/YYYY I’m going to tear them up and demand that my bank send me new ones with YYYY-MM-DD.
Thank you all for chiming in!
Seems like the most likely answer is that it’s written on that old piece of paper, and it stems from there.
At least, that’s the reason I’m gonna use from now on 
It’s pretty easy to solve any ambiguity problem here: Write the name of the month rather than a number. After all, the name of the month really is “January,” not “1.” Computerized sorting is a different issue, but there’s no reason that in dating your checks you should feel obligated to follow a method appropriate for computerized sorting.
[QUOTE=MrSquishy]
Hear fuckin’ hear.
I haven’t written a cheque in a couple of years, but when I get home tonight I’m going to take a look at my chequebook. If it’s true that they have date blocks with DD/MM/YYYY I’m going to tear them up and demand that my bank send me new ones with YYYY-MM-DD.
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The ones I got from TD Canada Trust are YYYYMMDD and I wasn’t offered a choice in the matter when I ordered them. Just out of curiosity (since I won’t need more cheques for quite some time) I looked at their online order form a couple of days ago and the date block now appears to be 20YYMMDD (i.e. they preprint the century).
We do go from smallest to largest–the months can only go up to 12, the days can only go up to 31, and the years can go up to eternity.
Makes sense to me.
[QUOTE=acsenray]
It’s pretty easy to solve any ambiguity problem here: Write the name of the month rather than a number. After all, the name of the month really is “January,” not “1.” Computerized sorting is a different issue, but there’s no reason that in dating your checks you should feel obligated to follow a method appropriate for computerized sorting.
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You mean, like 22 जुलाई 2008?
The meaning of which is obvious to anyone who speaks Hindi.
