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.
I was taught DD/MM/YY and that's what I use in typed form, but I prefer MM/DD/YYYY, at least in speech e.g. 'June 13th 2025'. It feels cleaner to narrow by month, then day, otherwise you're mentally having to wait for context, working backwards. The year is almost irrelevant as it changes so infrequently, about once a year.
ISO 8601 for organising on a computer, as sorting by largest to smallest is the most logical.
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I mean that also makes sense, year-month-day. The other way of course is day-month-year, also logical, those two are in ascending or descending order.
And then there is the American month-day-year.
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wrote on last edited by [email protected]Edit: Actually nvm, I'm just having a wild speculation. I have no idea why people use this date format.
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I think its more like... Imagine conversations going like this:
"When did the moon landing happen again? I forgot."
"July 20th"
"When? Last year?"
"No, two years ago, 1969."
July 20th, 1969
That's how this date format came to be. At least that's what I assume.
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Every digital clock displays hours:minutes:seconds. Largest to smallest. I see no reason not to follow the same pattern with the date year/month/day.
This is also how my phone time stamps a photo - year/month/day/hours/minutes/seconds.
This seems very logical to me.
We read left to right.
Hour left makes sense as hour is very important to know, many times for important than the minutes.
With dates year is usually not that important to know, and day/month became much more important to know in a daily basis. So they get a preference.
For instance, a doctor gives you an appointment on 2025-07-25. The first thing you read is 2025, which os not very important as the day and month, as you could already assume the day. A date on 25-07-2025 gives you important information sooner.
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I was taught DD/MM/YY and that's what I use in typed form, but I prefer MM/DD/YYYY, at least in speech e.g. 'June 13th 2025'. It feels cleaner to narrow by month, then day, otherwise you're mentally having to wait for context, working backwards. The year is almost irrelevant as it changes so infrequently, about once a year.
ISO 8601 for organising on a computer, as sorting by largest to smallest is the most logical.
I completely agree with you.
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Every digital clock displays hours:minutes:seconds. Largest to smallest. I see no reason not to follow the same pattern with the date year/month/day.
This is also how my phone time stamps a photo - year/month/day/hours/minutes/seconds.
This seems very logical to me.
Everybody says this, but I keep seeing mm/dd/yyyy from north American sources, and dd/mm/yyyy from pretty much everywhere else.
Why are we stupid
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Anyone who doesn't use ISO 8601 is wrong.
No. RFC 2822 (short format) is also great. â20 Mar 2025â
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All display of time should follow this format:
Chronon.PlanckTime.Yottayear.Zettayear.Exayear.Petayear.Terayear.Gigayear.Megayear.Kiloyear.CosmicAge.GalacticYear.Epoch.Eon.YourMom.Era.Aeon.Megaannum.Millennium.Century.Decade.Year.Month.Day.Hour.Minute.Second
I much prefer:
Milliseconds.Second.Minute.Hour.Day.Month.Year.Decade.Century.Millennium.Megaannum.Aeon.Era.Ligma.Eon.Epoch.GalacticYear.CosmicAge.Kiloyear.Megayear.Gigayear.Terayear.Petayear.Exayear.Zettayear.Yottayear.PlanckTime.Chronon.
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We read left to right.
Hour left makes sense as hour is very important to know, many times for important than the minutes.
With dates year is usually not that important to know, and day/month became much more important to know in a daily basis. So they get a preference.
For instance, a doctor gives you an appointment on 2025-07-25. The first thing you read is 2025, which os not very important as the day and month, as you could already assume the day. A date on 25-07-2025 gives you important information sooner.
I agree but my appointment is three months from now, so knowing that it isn't this month is more important than knowing the day of the month first.
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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.
Legacy reasons
That's it
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Everybody says this, but I keep seeing mm/dd/yyyy from north American sources, and dd/mm/yyyy from pretty much everywhere else.
Why are we stupid
In hungary we use yy/mm/dd
And AFAIK estonia, china, japan and mongolia too
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In America we only say July third or FOURTH OF JULY
Perfect:
7/2/'25
7/3/'25
4/7/'25
7/5/'25
7/6/'25 -
9:30
Which I would say as "Half past nine".
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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 personally prefer yyyy-mm-dd, as the Japanese do, which also puts month before day. I think it's because they tend to prioritize history, so that makes sense. Year gives a historical context, month gives the season, while day is kind of arbitrary when talking about historical events. Day will matter most if I'm making short term plans, though, so I certainly see the appeal for day to day life.
Depending on what you're doing, one will matter more. Precision matters more the more fine tuned the situation.
Think of it like hours vs minutes vs seconds. If I'm just thinking vaguely about the time of day, hour gives me most of the context. If I'm meeting someone or baking cookies, minutes matter a lot more but seconds is a bit too specific. If I'm defusing a bomb? Seconds matter.
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No. RFC 2822 (short format) is also great. â20 Mar 2025â
Until you try to sort your log files alphabetically.
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I personally prefer yyyy-mm-dd, as the Japanese do, which also puts month before day. I think it's because they tend to prioritize history, so that makes sense. Year gives a historical context, month gives the season, while day is kind of arbitrary when talking about historical events. Day will matter most if I'm making short term plans, though, so I certainly see the appeal for day to day life.
Depending on what you're doing, one will matter more. Precision matters more the more fine tuned the situation.
Think of it like hours vs minutes vs seconds. If I'm just thinking vaguely about the time of day, hour gives me most of the context. If I'm meeting someone or baking cookies, minutes matter a lot more but seconds is a bit too specific. If I'm defusing a bomb? Seconds matter.
You can also sort files named using this format alphabetically and they'll still be chronologically correct.
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I agree but my appointment is three months from now, so knowing that it isn't this month is more important than knowing the day of the month first.
Is it honestly more common to have something in another month than the current one?
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Yeh. They stuffed em in random places each time I'm sure it made sense at the time
They renamed mens quintembris and mens sextembris to July and August. Originally, The Roman year started on the spring equinox at 1 March, and SeptemberâDecember were indeed the 7^thâ10^th month of their year. Spring equinox shifted over the centuries due to an incorrectly calculated length of the year. I forgot why they shifted New Year to 1 January and who did this.
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So, by the time someone in the UK has finished saying the day and "of," an American has said the month and day.
The US is finally more efficient!
Except other languages beat English.
Germans just say the numbers. For example, today is the 31st 5th. Who needs the month name anyways?
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No. RFC 2822 (short format) is also great. â20 Mar 2025â
this is terrible
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Until you try to sort your log files alphabetically.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]This is for display, not data processing.
Also guess what, journalctl formats date like "May 21 00:48:56" (probably according to system locale). Why would you sort your log files alphabetically? They should already be in chronological order.
