Date format in UK vs US

Question

Why is the most common date format in the US like mm/dd/yyyy, whereas in Europe (including the UK) it's more common to have dd/mm/yyyy?

Looking around, I found that the US form is actually the more traditional Anglo-Saxon way, but the British adapted to using the European form in the early 20th Century.

But I couldn't find a definitive discussion of the history of the different formats. Is it just conventional, or is there an official 'British date standard' (like with metric and imperial, for example).

Answer 1

Although there are people who will sometimes say:

1. Today is Thursday, the 24^th of May, 2012.

There are also others who instead say the same thing this way:

2. Today is Thursday, May 24^th, 2012.

Certainly in the United States, the second way of mentioning a date is more common than the first. The long form sounds more formal to us, as in “on the Fourth of July” being more formal and long-winded than simply saying “on July 4^th”.

It was pronouncing the month before the day out loud that gave to retaining that same original order when converted to digits: merely convert the month name to a natural number, and there you have your answer. What’s today’s date? It’s May 24^th. Instead of writing May-24, we simply change the “May” to “5” and write 5-24 or ⁵⁄₂₄.

That way it follows the natural language order and so requires no mental gymnastics to switch things around when speaking the date aloud. Similarly “September 11^th” gets written ⁹⁄₁₁, etc.

The full spoken form with the year, “May 24^th, 2012”, then becomes the written shorthand “5/24/2012”, or often just “5/24/12”. “Christmas of 2001” can be, and somewhat annoying often is, written “12/25/1”, while “January 25^th, 2012” becomes “1/25/12”.

This isn’t usually any sort of problem because of universal consensus on how to interpret such things in the United States. If you write day/month/year in America, you will not be understood. Although I myself prefer the ISO notation, normal people do not use it in their daily affairs.

Answer 2

It's very possible that the US inherited this from an outdated English format - much like the length unit, after Henry III's foot and which the English have left behind in favour of the more logical metric system.

One argument I've heard in favour of the American system of dating is that the numbers of months in a year is smaller than the number of days in a month which itself is smaller than the number of possible years. So you would have 12/31/2013, in ascending order. I don't really buy this argument, but OP might be interested in it anyway so here it is.

Meanwhile, in Northern Europe they've moved on to an opposite, descending date standard: year/month/day.

Answer 3

The 29th of May Is Oak-Apple Day. Ring-a-ding-ding! Long live the King!

That was an old rhyme celebrating the return of Charles II to Britain at the beginning of the Restoration in 1660.

I like to abbreviate dates as day/month in Roman numerals/year, with periods/full stops rather than "/" between the numbers, such that today is 31.vii.2018. Sometimes I make the last "i" a "j" (an affectation, I know, and a throwback to ancient manuscripts), and drop the "20" in the year, so that I have "31.vij.18". A month-number in Roman numerals can't be mistaken for a day-number. My way is not perfect: I don't think O-W Kenobi would write "4.v. be with you", for example, but then, he wouldn't write "5/4" or "4/5" either. He would write out "May the 4th...".

(I spent several years in the military when I was much younger, and got used to the dd/mm/yy format used in the US military. I surmise that the US armed forces adopted this format during World War I, to minimize confusion with allies, but I don't know for sure.)

Answer 4

Personally if I was to say a date I would do so in the format mentioned by Andrew Leach, or even 'the 24th of May'. I suppose it depends on what you're used to. The American date format often has me confused unless the month is spelled out.