In 1995 this was changed to the colon in the interest of compatibility with ISO 8601. And I am the only one in our family whose birthdate can be misconstrued – the others are lucky enough to be past 12 in the month. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. European Address Formats; Help and advice. Dates are critical info and it IS confusing when they’re illogical, and used on key documents that cross borders. Then the patient would come in and ask how big is it. I only use purely numerical formats when the reader is not North American. As for driving on which side of the road, remember, please blame Napoleon! On some radio stations, announcers regularly give the current time on both forms, as in "Es ist jetzt vierzehn Uhr einundfünfzig; neun Minuten vor drei" ("It is now fourteen fifty-one; nine minutes to three")[citation needed]. Creates a date value from a textual representation, text, following ISO 8601 format standard.An optional culture may also be provided (for example, "en-US").. Date.FromText("2010-02-19") // Date… So please edit the post. As a European Norm, CEN and CENELEC member states are obligated to adopt the standard as national standard without alterations as well. And oh yeah: where *did* we get our ridiculously complicated imperial measurement system? Everything ends up in a computer eventually! “Meet Me in St. Louis” in “The Family Stone”: a case of emotional larceny. Some goes for Taiwan’s 105/01/06 as their first year of the Minguo era was in 1911. ISO is the better way. The American format is only truly logical if you say dates the American way. In Prussia there are many roads, Each man must find his own way.”. It's very good for real-time measurement, the use of this software is very professional. For example, "dreiviertel drei" (three-quarter three, see table below) stands for "three quarters of the third hour have passed". What is true is that, when written numerically, you must use day-month-year in British English. I doubt it would have been adopted as shorthand — of if it had been, adopted as readily — if it didn’t jive so nicely with the U.S.’s 911 emergency number. Now when you browse the folder everything is in chronological order making that one pic you are looking for easy to find. Sorry but a few countries write in neither month-day-year nor day-month-year. However, leading zeros were allowed according to machine writing standards if they helped aligning dates. The UK, Ireland, Malta, and Cyprus are the only holdouts left in Europe driving on the left side of the road. Yes, there are situations where this will probably never matter, for example dating a letter. When asked for my DofB, I say 23rd of the 5th, ’64. The ISO standard uses hyphens, not slashes, to separate yyyy-mm-dd. Your comment about the ‘”9/11″ precedent’ intrigued me because it left me wondering whether you were aware of the significance of 911 in the U.S. (It’s the nationally recognized number to dial in an emergency. Americans understand other Americans, Brits understand other Brits, Nerds and mathematicians understand other nerds and mathematicians. The date order on the card was always Day, Month, Year. Not the intended February 1, 2007. *DMY => DD.MM.YY If the dates in the sheet you have received are formatted as texts, you can apply a formula to convert the dates from European to US. Hi John – I’ve lived in London for nearly 10 years and would concur with your conclusions (except for the reference to the “Colonies” :)), most of which I noted myself in my own comment. Excel always fails when the date contains a combination that … If the files are saved with names in ISO 8601 format (i.e., 20120120_FILE, 20120415_FILE, and 20121201FILE) they will automatically appear in chronological order when you view the file listing in the directory where they have been saved. (Call me picky, but hardly a day passes that somebody doesn’t send me an unprovable tall tale about this guy, in a claim that’s more often than not debunked in Snopes. As a logician, I contend that the information presented is insufficient to prove that Barack Obama did not visit on 24 MAY 2008, as well as in 2011. As such, the ISO 8601 is: 1. There is only one correct way to write a date, year then month then day. Personally, I prefer the Asian style date format: year, month, day. The worst potential usability problems come when the date is written only with numbers as in the following usa, because the date's interpretation will be european from one clock to another. If you are working in an international coordinate company, you may suffer with the problem that convert Euro date format to US date format. However, I bet all the countries he once ruled now use the Euro numeric. ... **** My problem is this, that when scheduling European customers they get confused since the date is shown in american format ex. 9 April 2012; April 9, 2012; 2012-09-04; and many other options are all unambiguous. Regardless of the fact, that AM/PM is also not my case (24-hour clock rocks) – if it’s 2:35:12 on your watch you don’t write 35:12, 2! If you write DD.MM.YYYY, or DD/MM/YYYY, or with commas, or however, that’s ok, too! BTW, for those who use the time analogy, you hav it backwards. Date.FromText. Since you’re an academic, Mr. Yagoda, I’m kind of surprised your entry on date formats fails to note that historians who write in English, regardless of nation, have been using the 12 April 2012 format for quite some time. If they ping you in February for a March renewal you might suspect the date in the mail doesn’t indicate November. If you have an enquiry or are looking for some information then please type a question or keyword(s) into the box provided, and we will return a list of articles to help you. My family were all born in the UK, but my children were largely schooled in BC. The same way of giving the time is used also in Slovenia (of course using Slovenian language) perhaps as the remnant of the old Austro-Hungarian times. But when I’ve already got data that is in the US format EG: 6/12/2019 and want to change it to 12/06/2019 there seems no way. The format with the slashes can be confusing (for day/months 12 and under) when you work for a US-based global company as you don’t quite know which format people are using so I prefer writing it in day, month, year format. By the way, I meant to add that measurement and accounting systems can be very different. National standard format is yyyy-mm-dd. I have seen this on many paintings/drawings in museums, and here’s a passage from the Roman numeral entry in wikipedia, “In Central Europe, Italy, Russia, and in Bulgarian, Croatian, Portuguese, Romanian, and Serbian languages, mixed Roman and Arabic numerals are used to record dates (usually on tombstones, but also elsewhere, such as in formal letters and official documents). As for Fred, that’s nearly 300 years old and irrelevant. White and Strunk in Elements of Style urge use of the non-comma format for composition. The European Committee for Standardization (CEN) and European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) adopted ISO 8601 with EN 28601, now EN ISO 8601. [citation needed]. I grew up with military parents so the European format is what I’ve used mostly in my life except in school where teachers would give me a hard time. Use a regular expression in MS Word’s Advanced Find/Replace feature to locate all dates in European format. I’m nearly 60 now. I used to fly to America a lot. If 25% of the world population EXCLUSIVELY uses year/month/day, which happens to be the ISO standard, then concluding “most of the rest of the world” is a bit misleading. In German-speaking Switzerland, only the 12-hour clock is used in everyday speech[citation needed]. Save those keystrokes, and use them, if you do save, at the end of life to explain yourself, without typing. If an American writes May 3, 1988 as 05/03/1988 but an Italian writes May 3, 1988 as 03/05/1988 who's to know what's what! The Modern Language Association (MLA) format for academic writing in the humanities specifies that dates be given as day month year; today would be 20 September 2014. Obvious: two horsemen approach on a road, equally suspicious of each other. England (and I do mean England, not Britain) had been a unified country for over 800 years when Napoleon tried to invade. I’m so paranoid about forgetting to renew the couple of domain names I care about that I’ve authorized my provider to bill my credit card automatically when they’re due to renew. Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Also: the 12 April 2012 format is routinely used by American genealogists when they write; I know because my sister happens to be one. In colloquial speech, the 12-hour clock is also used in some places/countries. Caesar? In the UK the emergency telephone number is 999 or so I thought. *USA => MM/DD/CCYY, parenthetically, the default if nothing is specified is *ISO, additionally, if the suffix “0” (*ZERO) is added, there are no delimiters, my favoured choice would be *ISO, although many here would prefer *EUR. Firstdayofweek specifies the first day of the week. New York Times outliers: “maths,” “trainers” and “mate”, http://www.usa.gov/Topics/Independence-Day.shtml, http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/scan.htm, Cách viết ngày tháng ở các nước khác nhau trên thế giới, “What we were able to provide our young men during an abbreviated season was a little bit of special”—U. – September the 11th. Should ever be forgot. JOHN – but we live in a world now. What point are you trying to make, Rizzo? We could all be speaking Esperanto, too. So today would be written as 2012.04.10. 14:51 or 14.51. Elected in sense of choosing, which they did do knowingly but I’m sure with no thought of date formats. On a related note, are Brits more, or less, likely to use the less common style of “Month the Day” instead of “the Day of Month” or “Month Day,” at least for important dates? Also, what is the source of the illustration? Except for Austria, Germany and Switzerland, see the navigation box on the bottom to find individual articles per country. A descending hierarchy makes the most logical sense when referring to orders of time. 2.Another column has date in DD/MM/YYYY (27/08/2016) format but PowerBI is reading it as Text. Inserting a date from a database into a Japanese page with a Japanese format would be very helpful for the user. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. In most Post-Soviet states DD.MM.YYYY format is used with dots as separators and with leading zeros. Weekday names are commonly (and according to DIN 1355) abbreviated with two letters (Mo, Di, Mi, Do, Fr, Sa, So), whereas month names are abbreviated (if at all) with three letters (Jan, Feb, Mrz, Apr, Mai, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Okt, Nov, Dez). That’s also the ISO standard. We tend to think (as in most things) that we are doing it the “normal” way, but, Europe Blog notes, “The only countries that do not share the European date format in fact are the US, Philippines, Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, Canada and Belize.”, (Interestingly, the blog goes on, the European Union and other international organizations do not use the European style but rather the “‘ISO 8601’ standard date format. Thank you. Thus, if you're currently in the US, 06-Aug-2019 will be put as 8/6/2019 in your sheet, while for the UK it'll be … Change date format in Google Sheets to another locale. dd/mm/yyyy format is used … Nobody would do this because everybody would say “there’s an order”! Bendrix: Sam’s point, I believe, is that it’s more logical to go from smallest to largest — or, I would add, from largest to smallest, as per ISO 8601 — than it is to go both backwards and forwards as does the conventional US date style, which if followed for clock times would render your example of “the 12th second of the third minute of the fifth hour” as 03:12:05. I think the European form is elegant, and I don’t get any pleasure out of being in an exclusive club with Belize. numeric dates and verbal constructs: Just the other day I was driving towards a knight who got pissy, veered to my right and lopped off my side mirror. So, it is likely that the notation was added simply as a label.'”. But every ambiguous date format is to be avoided in all contexts. I’ve just been reading through the above for the first time. … December 25th (12/25); New Year’s Day? Choice of driving side is entirely arbitrary and a non sequitur. But who the hell came with MM/DD/YYYY? WHAT has religion to do with dates?! Can you imagine how stupid you feel having to pause and think of your birthdate? If you want to switch to a different regional or national date format (European or a specific European country, for example), you need to change your region in Control Panel. One was done in Europe, and the other is from U.S. military people (who, unlike typical Americans, use Euro-style dates and 24-hour time). Just out of curiosity, Methos, how much do you weigh in kilograms? I have prepared the plan with US date format (9/25/2017) but it has to be converted to european date format (25/9/2017). While this clarification calms down my inclination to conspiracy theory I still see risks in research using the dd/mm/year when it comes to data. It struck me (and my mirror) at the same time that we needed better road rules. To me, the beauty of the European method is its progression of diminishing specificity with each increment of time: from day to month to year. I have always used the dd.mm.yy format as this is what I was taught in school, however, and somewhat bizarrely my father who is fast approaching telegram age uses the mm.dd.yy format and always has done. 6.30 Uhr. Think about a lot of documents are the same way Year Month day or Day month year. There is no usage in which this could mean the ninth of April, 2012. Napoleon? For half-hours, the absolute form as in "halb zwei" is used everywhere. In an effort to avoid international miscommunication, the International Standard ISO 8601 was created. No other date format presents the files in such a logical order. It’s a not true about Belize though, it’s a British colony and write their date like the brits do. Big OOps in Canada….. And I wondered too if horses prefer to pass each other right to right side, thus on left side of road…in which case if wagons rode that way (for eons) why not cars? Different Departements in France had completely different systems. The American format did not cause as much confusion as the date was usually written out in full. Days and Hours are more critical than Years and Seconds. That meant bringing together the different systems used in France, That meant unification. This filter no longer works in Excel 2007 as it expects to find the date in mm/dd/yyyy format. 01/02/2007 will January 2nd, 2007. “In the United Kingdom and, in fact, most of the rest of the world, today’s date would be indicated 9 April 2012…” -britishisms.wordpress.com. Another important thing to keep in mind is your spreadsheet locale. Here the organisation is closer to the US dating but with the year placed at the start, for example ‘2010/12/20’.”). The expanded form of the date (e.g., "31. Excel VBA Format Date. (BTW my use of suspension points in e-writing derives from Whitman’s 1855 preface. Trying to spend all day converting one to the other will drive you bonkers. yep or longhand as 25 June, 2016, organized from smallest unit to largest unit. The only downside would be that blog posts such as this couldn’t be written and enjoyed. Checks? (And no, you can’t first go to Google to convert stone to kilos — tell me right now.). Like it’s the 35 minute with 12 seconds at 2 o’clock! Japan sometimes write H28.1.6 (or slashes) to denote 2016/01/06 because Heisei is their current “era” and the first year of Heisei was in 1989. Left to right for computer sorting pure logic as greatest to least – so writing least to greatest makes perfect visual sense also. Took a bit but you learn by error. Anyone who must sort a large number of files in chronological order quickly becomes a fan of the ISO 8601 standard (YYYYMMDD). – November the 5th (Guy Fawkes Day) However, others hang on to old habits. Over time, I have come to favour the IBM date format standards used on the iSeries computers where the format code specifies both the order of fields and the delimiter: In case American’s aren’t aware, ‘telegram age’ means 100 years old. I won’t comment on the Napoleonic origin. As a native I can vouch for this. Oracle Databases also default to 12-APR-2012, which is kinda interesting for an American country. There is much more to be said but I’m trying to concentrate on the question! I THORT Canada followed UK format (dd-mm-yy) and was horrified this evening (11th october) to hear chortling news item on CTV about this date reading 10-11-12!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Bank downloads get frequently miscoded up to 12/12 (or rather 11 Dec and 12 Nov, since 12/12 always comes out right even when it’s in the wrong order). Sensible! Note that these phrases are exclusive to the 12-hour clock, just as the "(hour) Uhr (minutes)" format is exclusive to the 24-hour clock. I see no reason why gunpowder treason Especially in business communication, written or spoken, it is common to use week numbers with the abbreviation KW, standing for Kalenderwoche ("calendar week"), so that in German the last example would be expressed as "Wir erwarten die Lieferung in der 49. Even though I live in the US the Euro & ISO formats are more logically organized. Systematic use of the 24-hour clock by German radio and TV announcers, along with the proliferation of digital clocks, may have been a significant factor in this development. My data should be 06/02/2019 (dd/mm/yy) but the excel read as 02/06/2019 (dd/mm/yy) when I change the date format . At the top right hand of the page, click the gear icon left of the smiley face. I’m in the US Military and prefer to write the format at 10APR12 or 10 April 2012. Monday Day, Year is another one that drove me nutz because the only was to sort data was to import it and then separate the date elements, move them to a hierarchal order Year Month day or day month year. If you installed Microsoft Excel 2013 USA English version, when you open a file store in European or Latin American formats, Excel will not recognize the dates. I will urge others to do so ( especially if it irritates others) Why change it if it ain’t broke? The ISO standard is also used in certain Northern European countries such as Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Iceland etc. But I think that may be based on the precedent of saying “September 11th” rather than “11th September”. A variant of the 12-hour clock is also used, in particular in informal speech for approximate times. Week numbers are prominently printed in calendars and are widely used in the business world. This natural order (not the European one) is used in China and Japan. Pingback: “Range” | Not One-Off Britishisms. Stones, gallons and yards will surely follow. So check your data against the original when you're done. However pre-war I believe the date would more commonly have been written in the UK as, July 7th, 1920 – for example. Then, however, I discovered that on the back of the document someone wrote …, “Original Declaration of Independence If you wrote time like you want Americans to write the date, it would ss:mm:hh rather than the standard hh:mm:ss. This parameter is optional. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. How do you sort dates? I frequently use up so much of my attention on the month-day/day-month puzzle that I have none left for writing the correct year. It is common to hear people say, for example, "I'm still free in week 36" or to have a company write "We expect delivery in week 49". But when giving the date in full, you can just as easily say July 4th 2012 as 4th July 2012, without its sounding in the slightest unnatural or affected. The date will now appear in the dd/mm/yy format within your FMX site! I often get the year of my birth wrong, writing the current year by mistake. Unfortunately, he got the year wrong (it was 2011). I finally made charts for the consultation rooms to show how big 3cm, 5cm, 7cm, 9cm so doctor would say you have a 2cm mole on your back that we need to take off today. Er…. One always relates to the next full hour, in other words, it names the fraction of the currently passing hour. European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization, http://wwwu.hak-vk.at/sal/aenderungen_2007.doc, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Date_and_time_notation_in_Europe&oldid=986156857, Articles with unsourced statements from May 2017, Articles with unsourced statements from September 2017, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, “zwei Uhr/zwei/um zwei” (two o’clock), “viertel nach zwei” (quarter past two), “zwanzig nach zwei” (twenty past two) / “zehn vor halb drei” (ten to half three), “fünf vor halb drei” (five to half three), “fünf nach halb drei” (five past half three), “zwanzig vor drei” (twenty to three) / “zehn nach halb drei” (ten past half three), “viertel vor/auf drei” (quarter to three), "drei Uhr/drei/um drei" (three o’clock), This page was last edited on 30 October 2020, at 03:52. When is Christmas? European number format examples. No, that is entirely illogical. MM/DD/YY instead of DD/MM/YY can anyone please advise? The logical date part ordering and the metric system are objectively better than the alternatives even if you personally value tradition more than logic. Open a new Internet Explorer browser. The above solution has not worked for me yes, i can change the cell format to UK (rest of the world other than the Stupid USA) date format. The number of commas in an Indian balance sheet can drive you mad! YYYY-MM-DD (2017-03-30) I weight 82kg and I am 1.78m tall. Given that >90% of pre-1900 sword-armed road travellers were right-handed, they passed to the left of each other. You can also change the month and date order if you mentioned the month in words. How do you write numbers? The bank doesn’t seem to care as long as it’s got my signature 😉. Before the Revolution in France, in different Departements, people used to drive on different sides of the road. patient would say how big is that and dr would point to the reference. Change dates to US format using the Replace button. Although the ISO standard specifies dash rather than slash as the separator. Dates and now side of the road? There is a temptation to cut corners by using a two digits instead of four (YYMMDD instead of YYYYMMDD) but those of us who lived through the agony of the Y2K “crisis” are leery of the unintended consequences of such a “time-saver”. I NEVER write 04/05/15 for May 4th! The month is written in Roman numerals while the day is in Arabic numerals: 14.  VI. 1789 is 14 June 1789.”. So there you have it: one document, one country, two different date notations. Were they full of left-handed knights? How do you alphabetize things? Believe me they often email me many months in advance! The standard separator in Germany (as laid down in DIN 1355, DIN 5008) was the dot. In other words a presentation that will ensure immediate comprehension? Numbers may be written with or without leading zero in Austria or Switzerland, where they are commonly only discarded in days when literal months are being used (e.g., "09.11. But the US date format is absolutely senseless (sorry guys, I love America but please go metric asap!). Quebec does that but two recent items from Feds have used (eg) oct 26, 2012. Is there a way to apply this date format in MS project 2013 ? I’ll gladly proclaim my ignorance about Napoleon’s influence on which side of the road to drive. For my checks, I write, as an example, 10 April 2012. The logic shifts (and logically so) depending on what is most relevant in terms of our daily work. One of the things that Napoleon did was to unify France. France did not. And this ruins my report as it simply change the date. True, American historians attempting to appeal to the masses may revert to April 12, 2012, but those writing for scholarly journals will not. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. I suspect it’s the influence of the Department of Defense. I want to be able to sort this column by date, and thought I could reformat the entries using the "format cells" function to show them in a … I work in Treasury services and the differing date formats are a total pain in the bum. Others write 2016, June 25 or 2016.06.25 either of which is substantially easier to organize a group of records because everything is in order. “Are you going to Dave’s party on July the 8th?” *ISO => CCYY-MM-DD In VBA Format Date function you have the option to either define your own format or use some of the MS Excel predefined format. My intuition would put the number at 3/4 *at least.*. "der zweite erste" - the second first - for 2 January). For example… if you keep a folder full of family photos.. prefix them with the date. (I’ll get my coat…), With respect to this whole “Fourth of July” thing, I visited a website (http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/scan.htm) just to reassure myself that the original Declaration of Independence indeed uses the *July 4th, 1776* format, which it does. These conventions have been widely adhered to by German calendar publishers since then. No specific requirements or recommendations are provided in the European Union ... in part 2.C.1 (NtA format) or 3.2.S (CTD format); ... templates. bollocks… Fred Flintstone logic! We’re talking about a language in which the vowels of the virtually identical words dough, slough, and tough are all pronounced differently. Okay, WordPress screwed me again. No one has ever had any problem with that, and to the best of my knowledge computers understand it just fine! The locale is what presets your Google Sheets date format based on your region. I came upon this topic after reading a covid-19 research paper referencing 07/02/2020 ….a future date according to my USA way of reading and writing dates. Totally agree re Canada – . I gave up and adhere to the month/date/year style. And never will. YYYY-MM-DD is always the meaning when year is first (The logic behind this format is to read from most signifficant to least signifficant). A little later, Napoleon consolidated this position by ordering the military to stay on the right side, even when out of the country, so that everyone who met the French army had to concede the way. In UK the date is consistently written DD MM YYYY, sometimes with a comma after the day, but spoken it is often reversed with “the” in the middle, thus July the seventh; More commonly it is known as 7/7 – and is then of course consistent with either convention – to associate with 9/11. For left driving UK I’ve heard/read (can’t cite) that if riding a horse and meeting another rider it was good to pass on the left of each other….so in case of attack/need for protection, one’s sword hand was closest to the passerby/antagonist….assuming right handed of course. I believe it was from the same folks who thought it was a much better idea to drive on the left. As a mathematician, I presonally prefer to write dates like other numbers, i.e., using the ISO ordering cited. 1. With respect to the European and American date formats — and 24-hour versus AM/PM clocks — appeals to logic are very much beside the point. Mainland China invariably writes 2016/01/06 since the past 60 years. I’ve seen yyyyy-mm-dd used in in South Africa – the stamps in my passport were in that format. The default date … ps. In America, we do not ever properly say “July 4th, 2017.” The correct usage in our system is “July 4, 2017.” The “th” is reserved for adjectival treatment: “The 4th of July.”. Because this is 2016 and everything is computerized now. If this is the case, realize this is controlled outside of PostureScreen Mobile on the device OS itself. But that’s just me… 911 in North America! 4/9/12, on the other hand, could mean either date, according to whether one is using US or rest-of-the-world dates. In Germany, it is not uncommon in casual speech to use numbers to refer to months, rather than their names (e.g. Week numbers according to ISO 8601 and the convention of starting the week on Monday were introduced in the mid 1970s (DIN 1355). As John Adams wrote “The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. The euro going from the smaller fraction to the larger (day, month, year) and the ISO formatted inversely (year, month, day) It makes it easier to sort and organize records. In the United Kingdom and, in fact, most of the rest of the world, today’s date would be indicated 9 April 2012 or 9/4/12. Applying logic in encoding data nurtures critical intelligence.