I’m sorry but it doesn’t make sense to me. 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?
Ignoring the coding side of things…
It’s relative. And also works easier to navigate the calendar. If we’re planning something for next year I pull up next year’s calendar. If it’s this years and we’re planning something for later this year, when I hear you say August, that’s the month I go to. But if you say the 27th of August, The first thing I heard was the 27th which could possibly be this month or next month if it’s say the 28th today.
Idk, maybe like all U.Sians traditions, this was an Old-World British thing Americans preserved, since it’s a more direct term of the English language, more direct than Day then Month
so unless it’s a special day, if not holiday, for U.Sians like 4th of July, by default, Month then Day
My guess is the month is most relevant to an agrarian society. It tells you where you are in the growing cycle that the entire culture revolves around. The day and year offer little practical utility to a 19th century farmer.
Oh, that make more sense and seems plausible! Thanks!
Out of curiosity: do you also find it weird that (I’m assuming) you use hour:minute order when reading the clock, instead of minute:hour? Would saying the minute first make more sense to you?
This is already done often.
Quarter after 4 aka 4:15
10 to 5 aka 4:50.
Half past noon aka 12:30
No
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YYYYMMDD is the only correct answer.
That’s not a good explanation for the question, because the convention was established before computers.
My GP has cabinet with patient information.
The drawers are years, and then inside it narrows down to months. Probably the answer.
I mean it’s easier to sort like that for humans too.
I don’t think that’s true; before computers people would get used to one way or another and it would have 0 impact on their ability to compare.
When you are searching for a file in a filing cabinet of a finance department, it’d be a nightmare if records were filed by month first and year after.
It sure would, which is why nobody does that. Just because the month is written first doesn’t mean you sort by month first.
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It sorts by what seems to me historically by relevance, i.e. which day is asked more often because it seems a more frequent timeframe for everyday use in a medieval society compared to the month (with the seasons as something in between those two).
And I agree that since the digital age yyyy-mm–dd has significant advantages!
The short answer is, it’s what we were taught in school. Like many preferences, it’s shaped by the culture we grow up and live in.
I’m sorry but it doesn’t make sense to me.
Of course not, you were raised and live in a different culture; so, your preferences are different.
Ultimately, the right answer is ISO8601. It’s unambiguous and sorts well on computers. But, I don’t think any culture is teaching that as the primary way to write dates, so we’re stuck with the crappy ways.
There is an American subculture teaching and using ISO 8601; the US military. They don’t call it that, but I learned later that’s what it is. They enforce YYYY-MM-DD on all documents.
YYYYMMDD is commonly used throughout East Asia.
ITT: defensive answers and ISO-8601 supporters.
Yes, I didn’t quite calculate how controversial the topic would be, my bad…
I think the clear answer is that there is no real reason other than habit and sunk cost fallacy.
See also the metric system, A4 paper, and daylight-saving time.
I’m not Mexican, but this reminds me of a Mexican ranchera that says “No cabe duda que es verdad que la costumbre es más fuerte que el amor” (There is no doubt that it is true that habit is stronger than love).
I think the clear answer is that there is no real reason other than habit and sunk cost fallacy.
There may have been some historical event that lead to this convention dominating over others (though I don’t really know where to start lookin)
regardless of the month, I think what matters first is to know what day of the month you are in
You’re telling me that if you have a list of scheduled dates in the near future to meet with clients/patients/whatever, you first want them sorted by day, and then month?
So this list is the order you want to see these in?
- 4/5/25
- 8/7/25
- 15/6/25
- 16/5/25
- 23/6/25
Doesn’t it make way more sense to see them sorted by month first, then day, so that they’re actually in chronological order.
- 5/4/25
- 5/16/25
- 6/15/25
- 6/23/25
- 7/8/25
The only way you could defend the former listing is if you’re also arguing that it makes sense to sort the list by the middle column, and hopefully we all agree that is just absurd. We don’t alphabetize people by their middle names. You don’t look up a word in the dictionary starting with the letter in the middle.
I jest, but I think this illustrates a real-life, commonplace example of when it makes sense. I agree that MM/DD/YYYY is not in order of magnitude, but I do believe it’s in order of most significance to least significance given the timescales we are typically dealing with.
Such a waste. 2025-06-01. Easy. Chronological.
So,
- OP is asking why month before day rather than day before month
- In your example, it’s not clear whether you are doing Y-M-D or Y-D-M, but I assume you are putting month before day, so we agree on that part. But
- I think we’re all in favor of: Most significant on the left -> Least significant on the right. I’m just arguing that, most if the time, for the most common uses, Month is most significant. It’s just more common that you’re looking at a list of dates that all span the next few months than a list of dates that are all within this month, or beyond a year.
Most significant digits first. You write the thousands place before the hundreds, you write the month before the day. Of course, the whole argument is blow away when you write the year at the end instead of the beginning. (ISO YYYY-MM-DD dates for the win.)
Most significant digits first.
That would only make sense if the US wrote the year first, but they don’t. They just seem to slap the date together in a random order
I think that’s context relevant though. If we think about when dates are most frequently used (news, business, planning) it’s typically within the year (or month will give context).
That added with the fact it’s not uncommon in some situations to just provide month/day.
That being said, I don’t think either is better or worse. Just a preference kinda thing, unlike the issue between metric and imperial units.
little Endian entered the chat.
American here. No idea. Either DD/MM/YYYY or YYYY/MM/DD are more logical, but here we are. When naming/renaming files and including a date in the name, I’ll usually do YYYYMMDD format somewhere. If I’m emailing/texting others, I use MM/DD/YYYY.
Fun little story, the department I work in recently began to work with some people over in the UK, and even though I brought up the date format differences, we’ve already had someone of gett the month and day flipped and it caused some confusion on our end.
It comes down to the variable weather in the US versus the UK.
The UK has maybe handful of weeks of actual hot weather, months and months of rain, and then some weeks of bitter cold. The day is more important than the month who cares if it’s March or September? It’s another day of rain and grey.
The US has extreme weather changes across the year, especially in the northeast where differences in US and UK English first began to diverge, intentionally and unintentionally. In a state like Massachusetts, knowing the month is important for things like setting the scene in letters “home” and so forth. The summer months and grossly hot. The fall/autumn is full of brilliant colors and mild weather followed by months of bitter, unrelenting cold winter. The spring months yield to green and mild weather again. Knowing that the month is April is very important because the 4th of April is going to be incredibly different from the 4th of September.
Source: Link
You little shit
Am American and I hate the MM/DD/YY(YY) format. Unfortunately its what’s been taught and used as the standard date format for a long time.
I much prefer the ISO standard of YYYY-MM-DD. It’s the superior format logically moving from the largest calendar unit to the smallest. Also superior for date ordering files.
Yeah, I resently saw it and I agree with you.
I write the date a bit different depending on which format its going on.
For example, computers like to sort things alphabetically. If I’m writing electronic diary entries, I’ll name the document as “2025-06-01.”
If I’m hand signing a legal document, I prefer to sign it as “01JUN2025” or “01JUN25” if space is an issue.
If the format is preselected and deviation isn’t allowed, I’ll just write it like everyone else does.
Personally, I like dating things in ascending or descending order. Day month year, or year month day.
Personally, I like dating things in ascending or descending order
Hey! Me too! 🤝
I’m a fan of the 01JUN2025 format. It’s unambiguous and uses about the same space as other traditional formats.
It’s how I was taught in the Navy to write dates. I stood a lot of watches and made a lot of log entries.
To make sure its not December right away. Fuck that entire month. Everyone hates December so much they throw the years biggest party at the end of it.
I don’t have a clue why we do MM-DD-YYYY and personally I hate how dates are done in the west, to a degree.
For a maths course I’ve been taking at college, I never use MM-DD in my notebook because that and DD-MM are stupid in my opinion. I always spell out the month first to ensure I don’t get mixed up. I honestly envy that some languages like Chinese and Japanese have an individual character to help distinguish between month and day.
Also, I would love if every country using the MM-DD or vice versa format could all agree on which format to use for everyday things.
