Why do Americans want to know the month first and the day second?
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I'm sorry but it doesn't make sense TO ME. Based on what I was taught, regardless of the month, I think what matters first is to know what day of the month you are in, if at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of said month. After you know that, you can find out the month to know where you are in the year.
What is the benefit of doing it the other way around?
EDIT: To avoid misunderstandings:
- I am NOT making fun OF ANYONE.
- I am NOT negatively judging ANYTHING.
- I am totally open to being corrected and LEARN.
- This post is out of pure and honest CURIOSITY.
So PLEASE, don't take it the wrong way.
Context clues.
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I wondered whether maybe the us americans had continued using the old style and it was Britain that changed, but no: Britain appears to have been using the day-month-year order since medieval times. This latin letter from William Wallace from 1297 has that order: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Lubeck_Letter
*Given at Haddington in Scotland on the eleventh day of October in the Year of Grace one thousand two hundred and ninety seven. *
The latin line with the date starts with "datum".
I think it was a 18th century British fad that spread to America - for example, look at the date on this London newspaper from 1734:
- in the text it does also use the other format about "last month", however.It didn't make it into legal documents / laws, which still used the more traditional format like: "That from and after the Tenth Day of April, One thousand seven hundred and ten ...". However, the American Revolution effectively froze many British fashions from that point-in-time in place (as another example, see speaking English without the trap/bath split, which was a subsequent trend in the commonwealth).
The fad eventually died out and most of the world went back to the more traditional format, but it persisted in the USA.
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I think it was a 18th century British fad that spread to America - for example, look at the date on this London newspaper from 1734:
- in the text it does also use the other format about "last month", however.It didn't make it into legal documents / laws, which still used the more traditional format like: "That from and after the Tenth Day of April, One thousand seven hundred and ten ...". However, the American Revolution effectively froze many British fashions from that point-in-time in place (as another example, see speaking English without the trap/bath split, which was a subsequent trend in the commonwealth).
The fad eventually died out and most of the world went back to the more traditional format, but it persisted in the USA.
Great find.
I checked a few other historic front pages on Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_oldest_newspapers
The Oxford Gazette from 1665 used the same month-day format. The first edition from The Guardian from 1821 also used it. Some British news papers like The Times never stopped using it, while The Guardian is now using day-month. So it was the British after all. -
In normal conversation, it's more common (at least here) to say "May 31st" than "the 31st of May." I think the order of the numerical only dating system is just reflecting that.
Then again, you also write $5 but say it five dollars. The way something is said can be different from how it is written.
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Except other languages beat English.
Germans just say the numbers. For example, today is the 31st 5th. Who needs the month name anyways?
That's only useful for the current date, or dates within your current month. Otherwise this is worthless information haha.
"When was Archduke Franz Ferdinand assassinated?"
"The 28th."
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I'm sorry but it doesn't make sense TO ME. Based on what I was taught, regardless of the month, I think what matters first is to know what day of the month you are in, if at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of said month. After you know that, you can find out the month to know where you are in the year.
What is the benefit of doing it the other way around?
EDIT: To avoid misunderstandings:
- I am NOT making fun OF ANYONE.
- I am NOT negatively judging ANYTHING.
- I am totally open to being corrected and LEARN.
- This post is out of pure and honest CURIOSITY.
So PLEASE, don't take it the wrong way.
I think it's just the way we talk. It's just more common for us to refer to a date in speech like "Today is June 1st". Whereas other countries would say "Today is the 1st of June". Neither is wrong, it's just how things are said.
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I'm sorry but it doesn't make sense TO ME. Based on what I was taught, regardless of the month, I think what matters first is to know what day of the month you are in, if at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of said month. After you know that, you can find out the month to know where you are in the year.
What is the benefit of doing it the other way around?
EDIT: To avoid misunderstandings:
- I am NOT making fun OF ANYONE.
- I am NOT negatively judging ANYTHING.
- I am totally open to being corrected and LEARN.
- This post is out of pure and honest CURIOSITY.
So PLEASE, don't take it the wrong way.
For no other reason than to be different and contrary. Metric system anyone?
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Then again, you also write $5 but say it five dollars. The way something is said can be different from how it is written.
Sure, but the $ is signifying the following numbers refer to money. And people can write it differently than they say it. I will say "June 1st" much, much more often than "the 1st of June", but I will also almost always write it "01 June <YEAR>".
But the reason it is much more common in the USA to write dates as "June 1, <YEAR>" is because that is how it is often spoken here. That doesn't need to be consistent across other speech and writing patterns, it's just how it developed. Probably goes back to the printing press like a lot of the other oddities in writing here...
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Typewriter-optimized means it’s intentionally made to slow down your typing because the old typewriters couldn’t deal with too fast typing.
I wish that myth would die. If that was the case then E and R would be furthER away from each othER because being right next to each othER would make it likely for the two lettERs to bump into each othER.
Contrary to popular belief, the QWERTY layout was not designed to slow the typist down, but rather to speed up typing. Indeed, there is evidence that, aside from the issue of jamming, placing often-used keys farther apart increases typing speed, because it encourages alternation between the hands.
Thanks, didn't know. It's indeed a well-established myth then. Corrected my post.
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Then why "fourth of July"?
I suspect that when the holiday was getting going, it was spread by music, and "July 4th" doesn't carry the lyric .... Utility of "fourth of July"
The phrase "Born on, the fourth of, July!" Is buried in my consciousness but I can't name the song or any other lines to go with it.
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In America we only say July third or FOURTH OF JULY
I find that just to be because we are emphasizing the day over the month there. It isn't independence month, it's independence day.
It just comes from the UK like most of our shit does. The papers that were coming from there in the 1700s when we gained our independence said month, day, year. We stuck with it. The Units came from there as well and we only modified them to keep a standard. Then we tried to go full metric, and Ronald Reagan killed it.
That said if people are talking nonsense at a table at the bar or lunch and someone asks when you were born, they are usually expecting you to say "September" or "1949". If they ask how old are you, they are expecting "47.". Everything usually has context. Because usually someone only asks those questions if one they are talking about Astrological signs, or they are thinking that one age is better than another. To old to young nonsense.
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I find that just to be because we are emphasizing the day over the month there. It isn't independence month, it's independence day.
It just comes from the UK like most of our shit does. The papers that were coming from there in the 1700s when we gained our independence said month, day, year. We stuck with it. The Units came from there as well and we only modified them to keep a standard. Then we tried to go full metric, and Ronald Reagan killed it.
That said if people are talking nonsense at a table at the bar or lunch and someone asks when you were born, they are usually expecting you to say "September" or "1949". If they ask how old are you, they are expecting "47.". Everything usually has context. Because usually someone only asks those questions if one they are talking about Astrological signs, or they are thinking that one age is better than another. To old to young nonsense.
My reply was only silly nonsense kicked off when I said Third of July in my head.
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I'm a fan of ISO-8601 which is YYYY-MM-DD. When context is known, dropping the year on something is fine (i.e. if I post a schedule saying 'summer 2025 schedule', I don't need to start every date on it with 2025). Japanese does this as well (and I think Chinese and Korean, but someone is welcome to correct me if I'm wrong there).
If the year and month are already known, just using the day is fine as well (a calendar doesn't write the full date in every square). Having it in that order makes sense to me.
MM-DD-YYYY is right out, though, so I only agree with the 'muricans on the MM-DD part.
Whoo. ISO-8601 fan club. Its so much easier for computers to sort dates in that format. I insist on using it for documents at work and Excel even handles it better with less formatting issues. I do wish they covered it in schools earlier, its neat, logical and works best when everyone is on the same page.
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Canada's government has this standard, YYYY-MM-DD, but even they are inconsistent.
The rest of Canada often follows America's MM-DD-YYYY.
It's the inconsistency that's ridiculous.
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For no other reason than to be different and contrary. Metric system anyone?
Are you saying we Americans do things in objectively worse ways, just to remind everyone what we have the freedom to be confidently wrong?
Because I can confidently tell you there's no examples of us doing that. (This is sarcasm, intended to amuse you.)
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I'm sorry but it doesn't make sense TO ME. Based on what I was taught, regardless of the month, I think what matters first is to know what day of the month you are in, if at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of said month. After you know that, you can find out the month to know where you are in the year.
What is the benefit of doing it the other way around?
EDIT: To avoid misunderstandings:
- I am NOT making fun OF ANYONE.
- I am NOT negatively judging ANYTHING.
- I am totally open to being corrected and LEARN.
- This post is out of pure and honest CURIOSITY.
So PLEASE, don't take it the wrong way.
They say it "June 1st", as opposed to "1st of June", so it makes sense to write it that way. That, mate, was a hard lesson to learn for me lol.
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Canada's government has this standard, YYYY-MM-DD, but even they are inconsistent.
The rest of Canada often follows America's MM-DD-YYYY.
It's the inconsistency that's ridiculous.
Be the change you want to see. I use month names or ISO 8601 in anything written, have been for a year to the point where using month names is more accidental than anything else. If anyone asks, I mention it's government standard. Hopefully, the ambiguous date forms die out faster than the Imperial system.
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I think it's just the way we talk. It's just more common for us to refer to a date in speech like "Today is June 1st". Whereas other countries would say "Today is the 1st of June". Neither is wrong, it's just how things are said.
It's more efficient to say June 1st. I suppose you could say 1st June though. Not sure if anyone does that.
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Same. Keeps my reports nice and organized.
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I like it. Many agree that YYYY-MM-DD is superior. It also reflects informational entropy. Each additional piece of information narrows down the search space most efficiently.
But in normal conversation, chances are we’re talking about the current year. So it makes sense to skip the year, or save it for last.
Word by word, if someone says the month first, I’m already able to know roughly when this date is. Then the information is hammered out with the day.
If someone says the day first, it barely helps — could literally be in any month of the year. It leaves too much unknown until the next piece of information is received.
Spoken language is already inefficient, which is why we use so many shortcuts in it. If I'm texting someone about an upcoming event, I might also just use the day of the month or the weekday (wings on Fri?). But if I'm writing an email, signing a document, or doing something else that might be referenced weeks, months, or years in the future, ISO 8601 is the way to go.
