[QUOTE=Voyager]
As a useless piece of information, when my father worked in the UN in New York everyone did it the European way. They also crossed their sevens for some reason I can’t fathom.
[/QUOTE]
To avoid amibiguity between a 7 and a 1?
22-Jul-2008 is my preferred way for business. The month is spelled out (prevents confusion with the day) and the year is in full (to prevent confusion with the day as well). It is easily understood by anyone who has not seen this format before. What’s not to like?
[QUOTE=MarcusF]
Presumably there was one original way in England (where I understand English originated!), so the interesting question is: which group (US or the rest) changed, when, and why?
[/QUOTE]
A date written numerically is not necessarily a matter of language at all (well, at least as between those languages that use the same numbering system).
[QUOTE=acsenray]
Oddly enough Wikipedia has an article on the crossed “Z” , but I can’t find one for the crossed “7.”
[/QUOTE]
My mom used to call those “fevens” and hated them. If you write a one properly, with no upstroke, there’s no possible way to confuse it with a seven. Sloppy twos are more likely to look like a seven than a one. My middle-school algebra teacher had us write variables in lower-case cursive since there’s absolutely no chance of mistaking those for a numeral.
In Japan, you write dates in descending order: year/month/day. Of course, the year could be either the Imperial reign or international standard year. Today, for example, is 平成20年7月25日、also written in a shorter format H20.7.25, whereas in international format that would be 2008年7月25日 or 2008/07/25. I don’t know why, but periods are used most often with short era dates, and slashes with international ones, though there seems to be no solid rule about it.
Unless your whole country changes the way they do things, all you’re doing with date activism is confusing people. Japanese who see a date on an American document assume that the date format follows the convention of month/day/year. If you’re an switch to short-date 08/07/25 to represent July 25, 2008, then you will cause momentary confusion, and in the case of ambiguous combinations, you can cause someone to misinterpret the date. It’s not helpful at all.
Similar situation: I still run into people here who “helpfully” switch their name order when introducing themselves, even if they’re speaking to me in Japanese. Unless they have a common or readily recognizable family name, I might make the mistake of calling them by their given name, which is not exactly polite. At the very least, I’ll have to switch mental gears when I realize that the name they gave me is backwards for the cultural situation. Annoying. Most of the time, I’ll also be presented with a business card, which usually clears up any confusion, but the momentary uncertainty as I try to figure out if they’re using Japanese convention or switching the name order for my “benefit” means that I’m thrown off for a second when I don’t really have the attention to spare. I suck at remembering names, and have to really concentrate to remember them at all 30 seconds after I hear them. I’ve temporarily forgotten the names of women I’ve been dating for a while, and even friends.
In other words, pick a convention, stick with it, and people can figure it out. Screw with the convention in some mistaken attempt to disambiguate, and you’ll probably create more problems than you solve. The only way changing things will be helpful is if everyone else also changes. If it’s just your idiosyncratic usage you’re being a pain in the ass.
[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.
[/QUOTE]
Or how about Roman numerals for the month? The convention I used to follow when writing snail mails was to date in the form DDMMYYYYY with Roman numerals for the month, so 22.VII.2008. I can’t remember where I’ve seen this before, but it feels natural for some reason that the month, and not the date, would be in Roman format.
[QUOTE=Sleel]
If you write a one properly
[/QUOTE]
Hoo boy. Don’t you know better than to throw around words like “properly” when it comes to language?
In Germany, I believe, it’s “proper” to write a figure 1 kind of like an upside-down V with a vertical right leg and a slanted left leg. In that case, the crossed seven does help.
[QUOTE=acsenray]
Hoo boy. Don’t you know better than to throw around words like “properly” when it comes to language?
[/quote]
I do, know better, but in this case, I don’t give a crap. Since I’m having a day where I’m fed up with being tactful, I’m going to go ahead call it the “proper” way to write a one, and everyone else can kiss my hairy ass if they don’t like it.
I’m wording it this strongly probably because I’m tired of Japanese double-standards when it comes to writing instruction. There are several poor methods of writing that are common here. A handwritten Japanese number 7 often looks like a ク because they add a stroke to the seven to distinguish from the 1, where they add an unnecessary serif at the top. A single vertical stroke is the least ambiguous way to write the numeral, can be read by basically anyone in any culture I’ve ever come into contact with if they use arabic numerals at all, and avoids having to add extra crap onto other numerals to disambiguate.
[QUOTE=Apollyon]
Putting in a new computer system for a Canadian company a few years back we observed that some of their systems used US date format, and others used normal format :). They asked us to configure the new system to military format to avoid further ambiguity.
[/QUOTE]
Well, in the Air Force, we’re taught that there is one correct way to write the date:
24JUL2008 (written in black ink, of course). I suppose if there is room on the line, you can expand it to 24 July, 2008. 
EDIT: US Air Force, in case that’s not clear. I have no idea how the air-canucks do it. 
[QUOTE=acsenray]
In Germany, I believe, it’s “proper” to write a figure 1 kind of like an upside-down V with a vertical right leg and a slanted left leg. In that case, the crossed seven does help.
[/QUOTE]
Indeed. One reason is that a hand-written English 1 looks too much like the decimal comma.
[QUOTE=kellner]
Indeed. One reason is that a hand-written English 1 looks too much like the decimal comma.
[/QUOTE]
Damn straight. And how are you supposed to tell if an unadorned vertical line is a one, a lower case L or an upper-case i? It’s as bad as the perennial english-speaker insistence that the letter w is a double-u
[QUOTE=elmwood]
Same thing on my message board. (In vBulletin, you can customize the date format.) An American date format would alienate those outside of the US, the European format would alienate the largely US/Canada-based membership, so I said “Screw it. I’ll alienate everybody equally.”
[/QUOTE]
That level of compromise is also what let to the abbreviation UTC. Perhaps you should be time-stamping all the posts that way?
[QUOTE=Sleel]
There are several poor methods of writing that are common here. A handwritten Japanese number 7 often looks like a ク because they add a stroke to the seven to distinguish from the 1, where they add an unnecessary serif at the top. A single vertical stroke is the least ambiguous way to write the numeral, can be read by basically anyone in any culture I’ve ever come into contact with if they use arabic numerals at all, and avoids having to add extra crap onto other numerals to disambiguate.
[/QUOTE]
Human interaction, human communication, human language … none of them operate unambiguously on the purely verbal level. And it’s futile to expect them to or to try to force them to become unambiguous.
I cross my sevens to distinguish them from my ones - my sevens get very straight when I’m in a hurry. 
(I also write the month out in letters whenever I write a date that doesn’t have a date block printed for me - I wasn’t a fan of date ambiguity before I worked in payment processing, and I’m really not a fan now.)
[QUOTE=Malienation]
22-Jul-2008 is my preferred way for business. The month is spelled out (prevents confusion with the day) and the year is in full (to prevent confusion with the day as well). It is easily understood by anyone who has not seen this format before. What’s not to like?
[/QUOTE]
It’s backwards, that’s what. But in reality, we have a mixed bag of conventions related to order of significant values:
First Name, Last Name: least significant value to most significant value
Address: Confusing mix of medium to least to medium to greater to greatest back to medium significant values
Phone number: MSV to LSV
URL: LSV to MSV
IP: MSV to LSV
Product Details (typically brand/model, Honda Accord or Windows XP): MSV to LSV
My main motive for using the so-called Japanese dating version YYYY-MM-DD is that it’s the only format the alphabetizes in correct chronological order. Very handy when sorting status reports that have the date embedded in the document name (actually the beginning of the document name).
[QUOTE=RaftPeople]
To avoid amibiguity between a 7 and a 1?
[/QUOTE]
So I was told in a college German class. The German style is to write a 1 with an exaggerated upstroke, thus making it difficult to distinguish from 7.
American style has changed over the centuries. From my genealogical research I know that, a few centuries back, we used the day-month format. That usage survived in some groups like the Quakers into the early 20th century. (And, as someone pointed out above, it is the format still used by the US military, which explains why I think of it as “military style”.)
The style 25/VII/2008 has been used by several cultures. I’ve seen it in seventeenth-century American civil records. And I know that it was, and perhaps still is, common Russian usage.
[QUOTE=mks57]
You mean, like 22 जुलाई 2008?
The meaning of which is obvious to anyone who speaks Hindi.
[/QUOTE]
Whoa! Didn’t expect to come in here and find Hindi.
I agree that it’s easiest just to write out the date, especially in international communiques.
[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]
Well, I’d answer “tjuefemte Juli”, or twenty-fifth of July, but I suspect that’s mostly because the Norwegian language doesn’t do pre- and suffixes the way English does. (They’re mostly integrated into a word as a suffix - “The Egg” would be “Egget” for instance.)
[QUOTE=slaphead]
Oh yeah. Not only do you get lenghts of 28,29,30 and 31 days, then there’s actual months, four-week months and calendar months (4.4 weeks). GAAAAH! :smack:
And to answer the OP - because that’s just how American do things, as part of their continued attempts to drive the world mad. I’m still trying to figure out if it was done in retaliation to or provoked the european practice of using comma as a decimal and point as a thousands separator. That’s another winner in the international standardisation stakes. 1,000. 1.000 One or a thousand? Depends on who wrote it…
[/QUOTE]
Try dealing with official Canadian government documents, where the number format changes with the language. In a typical bilingual document, the English side uses the North American standard format **1,234.56 ** while the French uses the French European standard 1 234,56. Half the time I have to go back and take a second look at the French to determine whether the space is a thousands separator within a single number or a separator between two different numbers.
If you can wait until the 8th of next month, we’ll ALL be correct - 8/8/08