Mail Archives: djgpp/1997/10/26/23:02:44
Roger wrote:
>
> On Mon, 20 Oct 1997 18:29:27 +0000, "John M. Aldrich"
> <fighteer AT cs DOT com> wrote:
>
> >Very poorly. :) However, U.S. (1) dates are written with forward
> >slashes, and British (2) dates are usually separated by periods.
>
> As somebody who is British I find that a bizarre statement. We use
> slashes and dashes. I don't think I have ever seen full stops
> (periods) used in dates. Times, perhaps, but colons are more likely.
Apparently I made a mistake. Like I said, many computer programs
designed for British dates seem to use periods as separators. I am not
sure why this is. Perhaps I am confusing British and European date
formats? In any case, thanks for the correction.
> >but because half of the time the people forget and use the U.S. format.
>
> That is no doubt true for you, but M/D/Y is a major pain for us.
I'm quite sure that it is. :)
> I know it's easy to say but the form's designers should make it clear
> what is expected.
You'd think they would, but often they don't.
> By freehand do you mean writing the month as a word? That has the
> disadvantage that people need to understand the English months and all
> their possible abbreviations.
No, I mean that there is, say, a space labeled "Date:", and a line to
write the date on. The person writing the form is thus free to write
the date in any way he or she sees fit. If the month is written as a
word, there's no confusion unless they are writing it in Chinese or
something. :) (The only possible exception being "Ene" for January.)
> So, let's all use ISO 8601. What does the date 1997-04-02 seem to be
> to you? 2nd of April or 4th of February? It is the former so you only
> have to get used to the position of the year. For us the whole date is
> reversed (although I don't seem to find it much of a problem).
It's often possible to figure it out from context. However, if I see a
date written with the year first, even if I don't know about ISO 8601,
I'd assume that the month comes next.
What a mess. :)
--
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| John M. Aldrich | "To be 'matter of fact' about the |
| aka Fighteer I | world is to blunder into fantasy-- |
| mailto:fighteer AT cs DOT com | and dull fantasy at that, as the real|
| http://www.cs.com/fighteer | world is strange and wonderful." -LL |
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