Whyuse American dates on UK graph

[robbelg]

BBC news is showing a graph of Hospital admissions direct from the Govt briefing. But the dates on it are 16/9/2020 23/9/2020 30/9/2020 which is US format.Most strange.

Rob

[Laughton]

Don't think so - as far as I'm concerned, those are the UK formats. Surely USA formats would be 9/16/2020 etc.

Or have I been doing it wrong (and moaning at others) all this time?

[Itsallaguess]

Surely USA formats would be 9/16/2020 etc.

Or have I been doing it wrong (and moaning at others) all this time?

You're quite right...

One of the most famous dates in American history, 9/11, was on September 11th 2001...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[AleisterCrowley]

Yep, UK dates - dd/mm/yy very sensibly.
We used to cruelly mock our American colleagues with their defective and deranged date format mm/dd/yy !!
Not sure if we cured any of them. We certainly had no luck with 'Aloominum'

[swill453]

We certainly had no luck with 'Aloominum'

As in many of these cases, aluminum was our original spelling that we took to the new world. We then later changed it.

Scott.

[AleisterCrowley]

Keeps them on their toes. Aluminum is so nineteenth century.. Looks like it was Humphry Davy's fault

[robbelg]

What a cock up The dates on the graph were 9/16/2020 9/23/2020 9/30/2020

I transposed them when posting what a wally

Rob

[gryffron]

I worked For a small firm that was half UK, half US. After a discussion about dates with a colleague, I started to write dates in text to avoid any confusion. E.g. 8-jun-20. Even changed my MSOffice defaults to do this. Although an American would still think these looked wrong, at least they couldn't be misinterpreted. Most of the Americans copied my idea and started to do the same.

Having trained myself to do it, I still always write dates as text whenever I have the choice.

Gryff

[swill453]

I'd also avoid the issue, by using 20200916, 20200923 etc. That way you can sort it numerically or alphabetically and it'll still come out in date order.

If you need something that looks nice, can use 2020.09.16 etc.

Scott.

[Lootman]

I'd also avoid the issue, by using 20200916, 20200923 etc. That way you can sort it numerically or alphabetically and it'll still come out in date order.

If you need something that looks nice, can use 2020.09.16 etc.

It had to happen eventually. I finally agree with you about something! Have a rec.

[PinkDalek]

I'd also avoid the issue, by using 20200916, 20200923 etc. That way you can sort it numerically or alphabetically and it'll still come out in date order.

If you need something that looks nice, can use 2020.09.16 etc.

How does that resolve ambiguity of 2020.06.09 and 2020.09.06?

Genuine question as I've attempted to rename items in my folders but quite often don't know what I'm looking at! I therefore find myself then writing in text June or Sept, after the numerals.

[swill453]

I'd also avoid the issue, by using 20200916, 20200923 etc. That way you can sort it numerically or alphabetically and it'll still come out in date order.

If you need something that looks nice, can use 2020.09.16 etc.

How does that resolve ambiguity of 2020.06.09 and 2020.09.06?

Because it doesn't have its root in an ambiguous notation. It follows the numerical rule of most significant digit first (century) down to least significant (day). Nobody, surely, would imagine the month and day would be the other way round.

Scott.

[Itsallaguess]

What a cock up The dates on the graph were 9/16/2020 9/23/2020 9/30/2020

I transposed them when posting what a wally..

Well if nothing else, you've at least been able to prove to yourself how easy it was to do that, which perhaps very neatly provides an answer as to how it might have happened in the first place regarding the original BBC chart...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[vrdiver]

What a cock up The dates on the graph were 9/16/2020 9/23/2020 9/30/2020

I transposed them when posting what a wally..

Well if nothing else, you've at least been able to prove to yourself how easy it was to do that, which perhaps very neatly provides an answer as to how it might have happened in the first place regarding the original BBC chart...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

Especially if it was prepared by, say, somebody with an American cultural background...
(Although it would have been nice if an editor had spotted it before broadcasting.)

VRD

[mc2fool]

I'd also avoid the issue, by using 20200916, 20200923 etc. That way you can sort it numerically or alphabetically and it'll still come out in date order.

If you need something that looks nice, can use 2020.09.16 etc.

How does that resolve ambiguity of 2020.06.09 and 2020.09.06?

Because it doesn't have its root in an ambiguous notation. It follows the numerical rule of most significant digit first (century) down to least significant (day). Nobody, surely, would imagine the month and day would be the other way round.

"Most significant" numerically, for mathematicians and computers, sure and undoubtedly useful for that (esp. file names), but in human terms for social interaction the mmm dd yyyy form is a bit curious as you'd think that everyone would say the day first, as that's what's immediately more significant to humans day to day, as it's what changes most often.

After all, if someone asks you what's the date today you're very likely to just say "the 23rd", with the general assumption that most people know what the month is (as that changes less often) and are even more likely to know what year it is.

Of course, the yanks don't always put the month first. , and you have to pity the Canadians ...


https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/dec/16/why-do-americans-write-the-month-before-the-day

[PinkDalek]

I'd also avoid the issue, by using 20200916, 20200923 etc. That way you can sort it numerically or alphabetically and it'll still come out in date order.

If you need something that looks nice, can use 2020.09.16 etc.

How does that resolve ambiguity of 2020.06.09 and 2020.09.06?

Because it doesn't have its root in an ambiguous notation. It follows the numerical rule of most significant digit first (century) down to least significant (day). Nobody, surely, would imagine the month and day would be the other way round.

Yes I understand the notation but it certainly plays tricks on my mind but that must make me a nobody (often not knowing what you term as the least significant day of the month we are in)!

[AleisterCrowley]

I'd also avoid the issue, by using 20200916, 20200923 etc. That way you can sort it numerically or alphabetically and it'll still come out in date order.

If you need something that looks nice, can use 2020.09.16 etc.

How does that resolve ambiguity of 2020.06.09 and 2020.09.06?

Because it doesn't have its root in an ambiguous notation. It follows the numerical rule of most significant digit first (century) down to least significant (day). Nobody, surely, would imagine the month and day would be the other way round.

Scott.

... very logical - shame there isn't an international standard that covers this.

Oh, hang on...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601
Date and time values are ordered from the largest to smallest unit of time: year, month (or week), day, hour, minute, second, and fraction of second. The lexicographical order of the representation thus corresponds to chronological order, except for date representations involving negative years or time offset. This allows dates to be naturally sorted by, for example, file systems.

[kiloran]

I worked For a small firm that was half UK, half US. After a discussion about dates with a colleague, I started to write dates in text to avoid any confusion. E.g. 8-jun-20. Even changed my MSOffice defaults to do this. Although an American would still think these looked wrong, at least they couldn't be misinterpreted. Most of the Americans copied my idea and started to do the same.

Having trained myself to do it, I still always write dates as text whenever I have the choice.

Gryff

Same here. Back in the 90s when I worked for a global american company, we developed a new customer order processing system and needed a date format that would be understood worldwide, so went for 01Oct20 format throughout (not 01-Oct-20, took up too much screen width). I still use it to this day in everthing I do

--kiloran

[swill453]

Reminds me of a council gym online booking system I had to use, which one row per day in a table, with the days of the week in alphabetical order.

So it went:

Friday
Monday
Saturday
Sunday
Thursday
Tuesday
Wednesday

down the page. Took a bit of working out to get the correct day.

Scott.