I also agree that the best change in date notation would be ISO 8601. However,
the slash (/) is not a valid separator of date elements, a hyphen (-) is
specified. Proper format is YYYY-MM-DD (early editions allowed a two digit
year in some circumstances, this has been deleted. So today is 2009-03-10. The
hyphens may also be dropped and the date written as 20090310, although this is
less human readable.
The slash is used as a separator between two dates (or times) to indicate a
range or interval.
There is a Yahoo group, ISO8601, devoted to discussion of this if anyone is
interested (it is pretty low activity). The standard also covers time
representations and combined date/time.
In the absence of this, it is better to expand the MM month element into three
letter alpha, MMM.
--- On Tue, 3/10/09, John Frewen-Lord <[email protected]> wrote:
> From: John Frewen-Lord <[email protected]>
> Subject: [USMA:43628] Re: 24 hour time
> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>
> Date: Tuesday, March 10, 2009, 5:49 AM
> The best way for the US to change its date format is to go
> straight to the ISO format of YYYY/MM/DD. When Canada
> converted in the late '70s, this was the official format
> at the time, and all Canadian Federal and Provincial
> government documentation at the time had to follow this
> format.
>
> Regretfully, and primarily thanks to Mr Gates, this seems
> to have been abandoned, due in no small part to Windows
> defaulting to the US-only format, regardless of which
> country it is sold in.
>
> This is not merely of academic interest. I bank with HSBC,
> and have both UK and Canadian bank accounts, including
> something called Global View, where I can view on line (and
> switch money on line between) my accounts in both countries
> simultaneously. The UK accounts are shown in DD/MM/YY
> format. The Canadian ones are shown in MM/DD/YY format when
> looking at statement summaries or selecting a date range to
> view a statement - but the individual entries in that
> statement are shown in DD/MM/YY format! Needless to say
> this is infuriating and confusing, and I wonder why HSBC do
> this, as they are UK-based. However, my printed Canadian
> statements are postmarked in NY State with US postage, so
> there must be a US connection in there somewhere.
>
> If anyone does online currency trading, all the trading
> platforms are in YYYY/MM/DD format, and various online
> videos I receive from US-based gurus and experts are also
> usually shown in this format. This does save a lot of
> confusion.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: David
> To: U.S. Metric Association
> Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2009 9:07 AM
> Subject: [USMA:43625] 24 hour time
>
>
> What are the changes of the United States adopting
> 24 hour time instead of the AM/PM thing? Would there be some
> kind of law (which would probably occur after metrication)
> or would it just be one of those things people just adopt?
> What about date standards? I would like to see America start
> using DD/MM/YY instead of MM/DD/YY. What does it take for a
> country to adopt a date/time standard?
