How should the date be formatted (dd-mm-yyyy vs yyyy-mm-dd, etc)?

[greenforest32]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country



I believe yyyy-mm-dd should be the format as it is the only one that makes sense for filing purposes. While the day or month is important in the present, there is no need to start with them first in writing. They can simply be referred to first when speaking. We should differentiate between the spoken dates and written dates.

Your thoughts?

[True Federalist]

10 Prairial CCXX

[Frodo]

Month-Day-Year, like it is done now in the United States. 

[Joe Republic]

The way most of the rest of the world does it makes more sense (just like pretty much everything else, of course), but M-D-Y is what I'm used to.

[Free Palestine]

10 Prairial CCXX

[MustCrushCapitalism]

DD-MM-YYYY makes the most sense.

[Tender Branson]

Day - Month - Year (normal)

[shua]

C'mon, how hard is it just to spell out the month's abbreviation?  That way, no one gets confused no matter what order you put it in.

[I left.]

I have a German friend that was born November 2....naturally his German ID said 02.11. You can imagine he got away with it in the States that summer drinking.

[bore]

Obviously everyone is going to vote for the one they are used to, but the one which makes the least sense objectively speaking is pretty clearly mm-dd-yyyy, while the other two are in my opinion fairly equal. As a european though I voted dd-mm-yyyy.

[Vasall des Midas]

For filing purposes? Year is the first sorting criterion, duh. That doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be listed at the beginning in the handwritten form - you'll see it just as quickly at the end. (It is no coincidence that none of these formats listed have the year in the middle. )

As for everyday writing? Well, whatever you're used to and your readers will expect, just as with the comma/point thingy. Though there's a slight difference in that mm-dd-yyyy is really almost as illogical as putting the year in the middle, and I haven't the slightest clue how it came to be (while with the numbers, it's all convention anyways).

[Pacific Councillor Big Wiggly Style]

Option 2.

Today's date should be written as 28/5/12.

[fezzyfestoon]

I've grown partial to dd-mm-yyyy. It just makes more sense. As do most alternatives to American ways of measuring things, except the whole comma-period mixup with numbers.

[NSA is just two letters away from NSDAP]

Obviously the only one that makes any sense is YMD, as you sort from largest to smallest. Acting like sorting from smallest to largest makes anymore sense than not putting them in any order at all, as MDY does, is silly.

[Formerly Californian Tony]

day, month, year.

[dead0man]

C'mon, how hard is it just to spell out the month's abbreviation?  That way, no one gets confused no matter what order you put it in.

This times a million!  It's how I do it.  It's how the military does it.  It makes sense, NOBODY gets confused.  The fact that other people don't do it confuses me to no end.

28May12 

Simple, short, everybody knows what it means.

[True Federalist]

C'mon, how hard is it just to spell out the month's abbreviation?  That way, no one gets confused no matter what order you put it in.

This times a million!  It's how I do it.  It's how the military does it.  It makes sense, NOBODY gets confused.  The fact that other people don't do it confuses me to no end.

28May12 

Simple, short, everybody knows what it means.

The twelfth day of May in the year 2028?    No matter which form is used, the four digit year makes the most sense, with the revolutionary calendar's convention of putting the year in Roman numerals coming a close second.

[IDS Legislator Alfred F. Jones]

I read D/M/Y fine when it's not ambiguous (28/5/12), but when it could be either I screw up (I read 5/4/12 as May 4, for example, and it's too hard to read April 5).

[white trash heroes]

month, day, year (real american)

[Emperor SJoyce]

Month - Day - Year (aka Normal).

[FloridaRepublican]

Month/Day/Year. Why fix what isn't broken?

[Swedish Cheese]

Why do Americans have a thing for making stuff more complicated than they are?

Depending on the context I use both yyyyy-mm-dd and dd-mm-yyyy. 

[True Federalist]

Month/Day/Year. Why fix what isn't broken?

MDY is broken.

[The Mikado]

Option 2.

Today's date should be written as 28/5/12.

I think I'm going crazy.  I read that as "Torie's birthdate" rather than "Today's date," and was coming here to make a "Torie needs a 100th birthday party" joke. 

[Kuu ülevaade olulisematest]

The aesthetic argument for MM-DD-YY is that there are only 12 months in a year whereas there are 28 to 31 days in a month and 100 years in a century; with MM-DD-YY, the numbers are most likely to go lowest-to-highest, which looks nice (for instance, 5-28 looks better than 28-5). It may not appeal to everyone, but there's some reasoning there.