Tuesday, March 01, 2005

How do you write your dates?

I know I know...

I've been here for a little over a year now, but when I help David write out checks ( oh, and it's spelt check in the US, not cheque...!!!!), I still have to muster ALL my concentration to write 2/28/05 instead of 28/2/05.

Sometimes, I look at a date that is, for example, 2/5/04, for a second there I have to wonder if it's the 2nd of May or the 5th of February. Apparently now, there's something to save us from all that, but it's gonna take some getting used to too!!

International Standard ISO 8601 specifies numeric representations of date and time. This standard notation helps to avoid confusion in international communication caused by the many different national notations and increases the portability of computer user interfaces. The time notation is already the de-facto standard in almost all countries and the date notation is becoming increasingly popular.
The international standard date notation is
YYYY-MM-DD

Needless to say, there has been more than one occasional misprinting with the check (sic.)-writing...

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have problem with the date too so I tend to spell out the month instead like Feb 28 2005

K. Restoule said...

I write the month as well so there's no confusion. Though I learned long ago that there is no international standard.

Oh and its Cheque, Colour and the letter Z is prounced 'Zed' not 'Zee', ZED !!!

Anonymous said...

do u have any idea what's the correct pronunciation for the word 'flour'? i know some ppl pronounced it as 'flower'??

Anonymous said...

Heh Heh. Yeah, my folks faced a similar problem a while back. My brother, who's in the US, sent them a cheque as a new year gift. The date was 1/12/2005. In India this means first december so they'll now have to wait a loooong time for that cheque to come through!

KEF said...

He :)
I don't think I'll have American vs SI Unit problem :))

Malaysia adopts SI units :))

Monica said...

Hey, Im still writing 2004

March 2, 2004 oops!

at least I got the order right !!

Monica said...

flour is pronounced Flower

In New York and as far as I know The rest of the US

Renee said...

Heh... I had to re-learn it (from MM/DD/YY to DD/MM/YY) when I came to Germany too!

After writing it DD/MM/YY for about three years now I think it really makes much more sense. However, sometimes I still have to doublecheck when looking at the expiration date for the milk! :)

makuahine said...

I am totally for dd.mm.yy format. I use the yyyy-mm-dd on my genealogy site though, that's the way it's supposed to be with that program. My genealogy program on my hard drive wants things like 3 Jun 2000.

But I prefer dd.mm, I get confused when it's mm.dd and assume that it's dd.mm unless the first two numbers are numbers that obviously can't be days.

bobbie said...

hey letti, thanks for stopping by my blog! we lived in canada for 10 years and i still (4 1/2 years back to the states) have to think each time - where am i - is it day first or month first... messes with your mind! :)

i love your wedding countdown - very exciting time!