On Thu, May 13, 2004 at 05:16:49PM -0700, Mike Ayers wrote:
The only correct English way I know to write dates is "March 20, 2003",
No. Try "20 March 2003", if you want English (spoken as "the 20th of
March 2003"). If you want to add superscript "th" after the "20", or
a comma after the month, feel free. The language you're speaking of
is "American", which is a distinct, non-normative, dialect. :-)
which I very rarely see. People from lots of different countries would
recognize "3/20/03". Therefore we have multiple ways to write dates for
This is malformed, even if recognized. And of course "01/02/03" is
totally ambiguous, having at least three different "normal" readings
of the six available. As expressed on forms, and other official
documents, dates in my country always have day before month before
year. This is true whether the month is expressed as a number or as a
name (possibly abbreviated).
most languages, and multiple languages for most ways to write dates. I
think Peter Constable is on the right track here.
--
Christopher Vance
