Why is written date order month/day/year?

Factual Questions
21

I fear that the author of the Wikipedia article is a little confused. It is certainly misleading to say that the month/day/year format ‘was traditional in England’ and that ‘[s]ince the 1900s the English have begun to use the d/m/y format, imported from Europe’.

Both the m/d/y and the d/m/y formats had been in use in England for centuries and were pretty much interchangable. Indeed, it was not uncommon for writers to use both within the same document. What is true is that the m/d/y format, as in ‘November 25th, 2003’, was more widely used and that this was especially so in print. What changed during the twentieth century was that many UK publishing houses decided that they preferred the d/m/y format. This was part of the wider move towards less cluttered design. Thus the really big change was the abandonment of the use of ‘st’, ‘nd’, ‘rd’ and ‘th’ for the day numerials. The arguments for using the form ‘25 November 2003’ in print is partly an aesthetic one. However, this change was never universally adopted. A number of UK publishers, including the Times and some of the other major newspapers, still prefer m/d/y, although usually as ‘November 25, 2003’.

The point is that, so long as the month is given as a word, there can be no ambiguity and both formats can exist happily alongside each other. It is just a matter of style. Problems only arise if numerials only are used and the idea of writing dates in numerials only did not become widespread in the UK until the twentieth century. By the time it did, the change in printing fashions meant that neither format seemed the more obvious.

22

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the day-month-year format in Italy and France–I don’t recall ever seen the year-month-day format.

I’ve always assumed the day-month-year format was the standard Continental format, though I could be mistaken.

23

French common usage has always been day/month/year. And I think most of Europe is that way and the Brits just copied the Europeans.

It makes sense in French anyway to be day/month/year…since they say “quatorze juillet” (July 14 to us). They never say “juillet quatorze”

24

A random flick through today’s European papers:

Le Monde (French) : mardi 25 Novembre 2003
Le Parisien (French) : Mardi 25 nov 2003
Jyllands-Posten (Danish) : Tirsdag den 25. november
De Gazet Van Tielt (Belgium) : 25/11/2003
Express (Greek) : 25/11/2003
Die Welt (German) : Dienstag, 25. November 2003 and 25.11
Der Spiegel (Geman) : Dienstag, 25. November 2003
La Padania (Italian) : martedì 25 novembre 2003
El Mundo (Spanish) : Martes, 25 de Noviembre de 2003.
Troms Folkeblad (Norwegian) : 25.11 and Tirsdag 25. november

All in the format Day, Month, Year or Day Month.

None lead with year or month.

25

The format should vary with the situation. In formal Swedish we use YYYYMMDD, but in newspapers, personal letters etc we would write 25/11 2003 or 25 november 2003.