Re: Date formats

On 16/12/2009, at 6:48 AM, Bryce Martin wrote:

I think you hit the nail on the head. I would suspect that the reason why
the US uses MMDDYYYY is because we say it as.. December 15th, 2009. So
people here write their dates 12/15/2009 because that is how they say it
in their heads.

Perhaps you say it that way BECAUSE you use MMDDYY format? You'd need to look at how the US settled on MMDDYY to know which came first.

It then translated over into the computer world where
these dates must now be stored.

Does the rest of the world say 15th December, 2009?

I can't speak for the entire "rest" of the world but for me and many others it depends on context and both forms can be used. When writing a letter I was taught to use the 15th December, 2009 format and I generally speak dates in that form. I suspect that historically UK English preferred that form but now with the export of so-called American culture via the medium of Television I notice many younger people using American idiom and speech patterns--quite annoying to me even though I think in some instances Americans have a very colourful turn of phrase (e.g., rubber-neckers and tyre-kickers). Anyway this is well off topic unless we treat it as locale issue for consideration under national language support.

Regards,
Simon Coulter.
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