I’m sorry but it doesn’t make sense TO ME. Based on what I was taught, regardless of the month, I think what matters first is to know what day of the month you are in, if at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of said month. After you know that, you can find out the month to know where you are in the year.
What is the benefit of doing it the other way around?
EDIT: To avoid misunderstandings:
- I am NOT making fun OF ANYONE.
- I am NOT negatively judging ANYTHING.
- I am totally open to being corrected and LEARN.
- This post is out of pure and honest CURIOSITY.
So PLEASE, don’t take it the wrong way.
I like it. Many agree that YYYY-MM-DD is superior. It also reflects informational entropy. Each additional piece of information narrows down the search space most efficiently.
But in normal conversation, chances are we’re talking about the current year. So it makes sense to skip the year, or save it for last.
Word by word, if someone says the month first, I’m already able to know roughly when this date is. Then the information is hammered out with the day.
If someone says the day first, it barely helps — could literally be in any month of the year. It leaves too much unknown until the next piece of information is received.
Spoken language is already inefficient, which is why we use so many shortcuts in it. If I’m texting someone about an upcoming event, I might also just use the day of the month or the weekday (wings on Fri?). But if I’m writing an email, signing a document, or doing something else that might be referenced weeks, months, or years in the future, ISO 8601 is the way to go.
I personally prefer yyyy-mm-dd, as the Japanese do, which also puts month before day. I think it’s because they tend to prioritize history, so that makes sense. Year gives a historical context, month gives the season, while day is kind of arbitrary when talking about historical events. Day will matter most if I’m making short term plans, though, so I certainly see the appeal for day to day life.
Depending on what you’re doing, one will matter more. Precision matters more the more fine tuned the situation.
Think of it like hours vs minutes vs seconds. If I’m just thinking vaguely about the time of day, hour gives me most of the context. If I’m meeting someone or baking cookies, minutes matter a lot more but seconds is a bit too specific. If I’m defusing a bomb? Seconds matter.
That’s the ISO-8601 format, Japan uses “/” or alternatively yyyy年mm月dd日
Yeah I know it by the latter but didn’t try to type it out on this phone, lol
I say June 2nd of 2025
I type 2025-06-02
Handwritten it’s 2-June-2025
I’m from before 2000 and the turn to years being so small broke me, it used to be so clear which number was the year with just 2 digits, and day, month, year is sorting from smallest unit to biggest, it has logic. But then for awhile you could have a 04, an 05, and an 06 and I was working with other countries, it wasn’t at all clear which was year month or day, so I started sandwiching the month in the middle as a word when handwriting dates and using 4 digit year, and year month day sorts like a dream for filenames.
As an American I’m not really a fan of it mainly because it’s different from the World standard. We are the only country that insists on doing it different. It would not be hard to change either. I would love for it to change but it’s not something I’m putting a lot of time or thought into right now.
The US is the only one to do many stupid things, like imperial units
I wondered whether maybe the us americans had continued using the old style and it was Britain that changed, but no: Britain appears to have been using the day-month-year order since medieval times. This latin letter from William Wallace from 1297 has that order: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Lubeck_Letter
*Given at Haddington in Scotland on the eleventh day of October in the Year of Grace one thousand two hundred and ninety seven. *
The latin line with the date starts with “datum”.
For no other reason than to be different and contrary. Metric system anyone?
The month first is best because consider what happens if a message gets cut off. You might get: “You’ll be flying to New York on the first of …” or “You’ll be flying to New York on June…”
The first message doesn’t tell you anything useful. Do you need to buy shorts or a parka? Do you have months to prepare or are you leaving in a few hours? Could this be an april fools joke? It’s a 1/12 chance. Totally useless.
Second message, sure the details are unclear but at least you know what to pack and that you need to hurry about getting the rest of the message.
Anyone who doesn’t use ISO 8601 is wrong.
FACTS
There are plenty of other scenarios with a similar pattern of starting at the larger scale and then the specific.
TV shows: Season 2 Episode 9
Theatre: Act one, scene 3
Biblical: Book of John 3:16
Other books: Chapter 9, page 125.
Address: 123 Main St, Apt #2
Phone numbers: country code (area code) locality-individual
I’m not saying either is right or wrong, but there are precedents for either way.
2-123 Main St, City, Province, Country
I’m guessing, but it’s likely because the spoken form for a date is normally, 'May 31st, 2025" vs “The 31st of May, 2025”, hence 05/31/25 v 31/05/25.
I once did some research on this exact topic, and my findings pretty much mirror your guess.
Every digital clock displays hours:minutes:seconds. Largest to smallest. I see no reason not to follow the same pattern with the date year/month/day.
This is also how my phone time stamps a photo - year/month/day/hours/minutes/seconds.
This seems very logical to me.
Everybody says this, but I keep seeing mm/dd/yyyy from north American sources, and dd/mm/yyyy from pretty much everywhere else.
Why are we stupid
Why do you use 60 seconds in a minute and not an even 100? Why use randomly sized calendar months? Why do you say doce instead of diecidos?
Ooh ooh I know whe calander one. 2 or 3 roman empowers were so up their own arse they added there names to the calander. Augustus being the only one I remember off the top of my head. In order to make them fit they shortened other months.
The first two are true that they don’t make any sense, but the “Diecidos” is because it sounds horrible.
In any case, you understand why conventions exist and persist despite imperfection
When you speak it, do you say July 3rd or 3rd of July? Both are fine.
I speak speak Spanish, so we just say “Primero de Julio” (1st of July)" an then “Dos/tres/quince de Julio” (Two/three/fifteen of July). An of course, all are perfectly fine.
