>Pretty much the whole world uses date format D/M/Y, except the US
Apparently it's not widely known that the most populous contry in the
world uses neither the US nor the traditional European system of date
presentation. In China the order is Y-M-D, in accordance with the
international standard ISO 8601 for writing dates in all-numeric form.
You may have noticed that I have been using this date presentation
for some time (note the attribution string above).
It has the advantage of being consistent with all the other numbering
systems I (and many others) use, where the most significant digit is
at the left, and the least significant at the right. For instance,
times are normally displayed in that manner.
Another advantage is that it is less open to misinterpretation,
provided the year is written as 4 digits.
This also presentation allows dates to be sorted as plain text
without any special algorithms; the same applies if a time is
appended (as in my attribution string above).
The European presentation (D/M/Y) is based on the verbal order "the
24th day of the 9th month of the 4th year of the 21st century" which
on the face of it seems quite logical. But (except in a few special
circumstances) we don't commonly say "the 12th second of the 51st
minute of the 11th hour" for times, so there is an inconsistency
between how we describe larger and smaller units of time. For most
other numbers, english-speakers say the most-significant digit first,
and have abandoned such usages as "four & twenty blackbirds" although
it remains in other languages (eg "vierundzwanzig").
On the other hand, as far as I can determine, there is no logical
basis for the US date order (M/D/Y), other than to cause confusion
for the rest of the world.
The ISO presentation is completely logical, and I look forward to its
universal adoption.
regards
Rowland
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| Wilma & Rowland Carson <http://home.clara.net/rowil/>
| <rowil@clara.net> ... that's Rowland with a 'w' ...
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