4 ms·
YMD is logical, because it puts the most significant number on the left. But both DMY and HMS are consistent in another way - the information is ordered from m
by reitzensteinm 15y ago
YMD is logical, because it puts the most significant number on the left.
But both DMY and HMS are consistent in another way - the information is ordered from most to least important for every day access, from left to right.
A vast majority of dates on advertising, tickets, timetables etc actually leave off the year, unless it's ambiguous. Similarly, one might say something like 'on the 4th', which implies 'the 4th of this month' (or the 4th of next month, if applicable).
This is the reverse of HMS, where the most significant number (the hour) is most important, and seconds are basically ignored day to day.
MDY, on the other hand, should be taken out the back and shot (IMO).
- wvenable 15y ago> the information is ordered from most to least important for every day access I argue that MDY is ordered from most to least important for every day access. Year is easily implied so it is last so that leaves month first and then day. You'd be surprised how many Canadians, which is officially DMY, actually prefer MDY.
- eslaught 15y agoIn my opinion YMD is the most useful because it is the most visually distinct from the other two. A date like January 2nd 2012, when arranged in either MDY or DMY format, is difficult to distinguish from February 1st. YMD on the other hand is obvious, independent of what the reader is used to.
- trebor 15y agoMDY is syntactically correct English: January 30th, 2012. Or in older form (where it would have come from): "Dated: January the 30th, in the year of our Lord 2012." Even the US Constitution is dated this way. I strongly prefer this way because it makes the most sense in the English language. For programmatic sorting YMD makes sense because is automatically sorts by Y, M, D, if compared as a string. (EG: on a filesystem.)
- sunchild 15y agoAbsent any date-format-aware sort controller: YMD will group results by year, then month, then day. MDY will group results by month, then day, then year. DMY will group results by day, then month, then year. That's why all my filenames look like: YYYY_MM_DD_filename.suffix
- sjwright 15y ago[edited because I realized we're in violent agreement] To me, MDY makes as much sense as writing pi as 14.3.159265
- reitzensteinm 15y agoI might be missing something, but that's not at all what I was arguing! MDY drives me nuts too.
- robryan 15y agoIt's more that different places use different versions that gets me. I have wrote a bunch of importers for sales an nearly all of them list the date time differently. Very few affiliate networks have used either a timestamp or the standards based datetime.
- bane 15y agoIt's probably a legacy from how we tend to say dates. "What's the date?" "January 30th."
- toyg 15y agoThat used to be the case in the UK, but I notice more and more how I'm the only one actually using that form in conversation these days, at least in my little corner of Northern England. Indigenous people have clearly moved on to DMY, i.e. "the 30th of January".