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Help with dates that are not in American format

AllenArtAllenArt Posts: 7,172
in The Commons

My Platinum Club membership expires on this date -  2023-03-01. Is that March 1st or January 3rd? o.O And if the company is based in the U.S., why the weird date format?

Comments

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,537
    edited November 2021

    as an Australian I am equally puzzled and we do day/month/year

    well going by mine it is year / Month / day

    Post edited by WendyLuvsCatz on
  • AllenArtAllenArt Posts: 7,172
    edited November 2021

    WendyLuvsCatz said:

    as an Australian I am equally puzzled and we do day/month/year

    well going by mine it is year / Month / day

    Here in the states we do month/day/year. Not sure when they switched.  

    Post edited by AllenArt on
  • LeanaLeana Posts: 11,823

    That's the ISO date format: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601

    It's a worldwide standard which is very often used on international websites.

  • PerttiAPerttiA Posts: 10,024

    You can never be sure with the US dates, which is why I always write the name of the month when I use dates in english. We use ddmmyyyy, which is logical from smallest unit to the largest.

  • isidornisidorn Posts: 1,601

    AllenArt said:

    My Platinum Club membership expires on this date -  2023-03-01. Is that March 1st or January 3rd? o.O And if the company is based in the U.S., why the weird date format?I'll 

    I'll stick my neck out and say that's clearly March 1st since the year is given with four digits. No matter if you use Year-Month-Day or Day-Month-Year they come in a logical order going from largest unit to smallest unit or vice versa. Only the Americans have to complicate things and switch day and month around.

  • AllenArtAllenArt Posts: 7,172
    edited November 2021

    Leana said:

    That's the ISO date format: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601

    It's a worldwide standard which is very often used on international websites.

    So, in other words, backwards to what I'm used to (March 1, 2023). Got it ;). I'm too old and set in my ways I guess. LOL

    Laurie 

    Post edited by AllenArt on
  • BeeMKayBeeMKay Posts: 7,019
    edited November 2021

    It probably becomes more clear with dates for the membership that are not the first of the month, like my own membership, so yyyy-mm-dd as everyone already pointed out:

     

     

    Minfo.JPG
    282 x 200 - 17K
    Post edited by BeeMKay on
  • CHWTCHWT Posts: 1,183

    For me:

    Membership Started: 2020-05-16

    Expiration Date: 2022-02-15

    So, yes it's YYYY-MM-DD

  • DripDrip Posts: 1,206

    Leana said:

    That's the ISO date format: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601

    It's a worldwide standard which is very often used on international websites.

    I was raised with the dd/mm/yyyy format as well, but from my days as a programmer, I very much preferred the ISO 8601 format. Why? Because you can order it as a text format (or as a pre-fix to a longer name) numerical or alphabetical, and it will still be in the right chronological order. Which is still very useful when used as pre-fixes in folder names on my computer: order folders by name, and everything is in a logical order.

  • memcneil70memcneil70 Posts: 4,295

    This!

    And if you look at your orders, they use the same format and you can see the date clearly.

  • HaruchaiHaruchai Posts: 1,978

    I always try and use letters for the month online to avoid confusion, 10 Nov or Nov 10.

    For a lot of us around the world, for example, 911 was yesterday not in September.

  • TaozTaoz Posts: 9,973

    Drip said:

    Leana said:

    That's the ISO date format: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601

    It's a worldwide standard which is very often used on international websites.

    I was raised with the dd/mm/yyyy format as well, but from my days as a programmer, I very much preferred the ISO 8601 format. Why? Because you can order it as a text format (or as a pre-fix to a longer name) numerical or alphabetical, and it will still be in the right chronological order. Which is still very useful when used as pre-fixes in folder names on my computer: order folders by name, and everything is in a logical order.

    +1

  • TaozTaoz Posts: 9,973

    memcneil70 said:

    This!

    And if you look at your orders, they use the same format and you can see the date clearly.

    They still use AM/PM for time in the product library though (the confusing format where 12.00 AM/PM comes before 01.00 AM/PM).

  • pjwhoopie@yandex.compjwhoopie@yandex.com Posts: 793

    One of the reasons this is done is for data storage.  With  Month - Day - Year, things will always be in order from  January to December
    01-02-21 Jan 2
    02-05-21 Feb 5
    03-06-21 March 6
    07-04-21 July 4
    11-01-21 Nov 1

    If you did those dates day first, they would end up in this order
    01-11-21 Nov 1
    02-01-21 Jan 2
    04-07-21 July 4
    05-02-21 Feb 5
    06-03-21 March 6
     

  • Victor_BVictor_B Posts: 391
    edited November 2021

    Yes, it's YYYY-MM-DD. That's how MySQL stores, retrieves and displays DATE values by default.

    But this format is for computers, not for humans.

    Good webmasters never show dates in such raw format on their websites. They are even never store dates in such format, but unix timestamp (GMT).

    PHP and MySQL has simple functions to convert "YYYY-MM-DD" format to any "human friendly" format. I prefer this one on international websites

    Dec 15, 2021 22:00

    I am from Europe and american format "MM/DD/YYYY" is stumble for me sometimes, for example, when I see 05/08/2021. (european format is DD/MM/YYYY). So, I think "Dec 15, 2021 22:00" is a perfect date format for all countries and international websites.

    Post edited by Victor_B on
  • ecks201ecks201 Posts: 446

    Taoz said:

    memcneil70 said:

    This!

    And if you look at your orders, they use the same format and you can see the date clearly.

    They still use AM/PM for time in the product library though (the confusing format where 12.00 AM/PM comes before 01.00 AM/PM).

    Is that EDT, EST or PST? wink

  • MelanieLMelanieL Posts: 7,470

    ecks201 said:

    Taoz said:

    memcneil70 said:

    This!

    And if you look at your orders, they use the same format and you can see the date clearly.

    They still use AM/PM for time in the product library though (the confusing format where 12.00 AM/PM comes before 01.00 AM/PM).

    Is that EDT, EST or PST? wink

    Probably MST? devil

  • CHWTCHWT Posts: 1,183
    Victor_B said:

    Yes, it's YYYY-MM-DD. That's how MySQL stores, retrieves and displays DATE values by default.

    But this format is for computers, not for humans.

    Good webmasters never show dates in such raw format on their websites. They are even never store dates in such format, but unix timestamp (GMT).

    PHP and MySQL has simple functions to convert "YYYY-MM-DD" format to any "human friendly" format. I prefer this one on international websites

    Dec 15, 2021 22:00

    I am from Europe and american format "MM/DD/YYYY" is stumble for me sometimes, for example, when I see 05/08/2021. (european format is DD/MM/YYYY). So, I think "Dec 15, 2021 22:00" is a perfect date format for all countries and international websites.

    For folks from East Asia, the YYYY-MM-DD format seems to be kinda intuitive, as dates are expressed in the year-month-day format in their native languages... not so intuitive for users from Europe and US though!
  • Victor_BVictor_B Posts: 391

    MelanieL said:

    ecks201 said:

    Taoz said:

    memcneil70 said:

    This!

    And if you look at your orders, they use the same format and you can see the date clearly.

    They still use AM/PM for time in the product library though (the confusing format where 12.00 AM/PM comes before 01.00 AM/PM).

    Is that EDT, EST or PST? wink

    Probably MST? devil

    Probably GMT :))

  • LeatherGryphonLeatherGryphon Posts: 11,652

    PerttiA said:

    You can never be sure with the US dates, which is why I always write the name of the month when I use dates in english. We use ddmmyyyy, which is logical from smallest unit to the largest.

    Well, I'm in the US so I generally use mm/dd/yy (or yyyy) on correspondence.  But I always use yyyymmdd when labeling folders or files.  Which is logical because it's easily sorted with newest on top.  When I'm speaking it's always name of the month first (e.g. October 10th).

  • frank0314frank0314 Posts: 14,276

    AllenArt said:

    WendyLuvsCatz said:

    as an Australian I am equally puzzled and we do day/month/year

    well going by mine it is year / Month / day

    Here in the states we do month/day/year. Not sure when they switched.  

    In the military we did Day / Month / Year, which is what I still tend to use on official things.

  • Victor_BVictor_B Posts: 391

    frank0314 said:

    In the military we did Day / Month / Year, which is what I still tend to use on official things.

    Yep, I know that american military use this notation. May be because it is more logical?

    btw, russians use dots dd.mm.yy or dd.mm.yyyy Just for information.

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 18,302

    Victor_B said:

    frank0314 said:

    In the military we did Day / Month / Year, which is what I still tend to use on official things.

    Yep, I know that american military use this notation. May be because it is more logical?

    btw, russians use dots dd.mm.yy or dd.mm.yyyy Just for information.

    That is a standard way of doing it in all of Europe I think but am not sure. Along with commas for periods and periods for commas in numbers.

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