13 September 2005

US date styles

The Americans' silly insistence on using back-to-front date styles, e.g. putting the month first, nearly gave me a dicky fit a moment ago.

I've had a ticket to see my favourite band, Magnum, for months, and I just looked at the agent's website which said the gig was on 12/09/05. Panic! I thought I'd missed it, but no, it's actually on 09/12/05.

Let me explain how dates should be written - they go from left to right in order of size:

Day - Date - Month - Year. e.g. Friday 9 December 2005.

Right, I need a cup of tea to calm me down now.

1 comment:

Philosophical Karen said...

I had a similar experience with an expiry date written 06 JN 05. I thought, "What! I just bought that and it expired in June?"

Slowly, slowly, it finally occurred to me that it would actually expire on June 5, 2006.