Why do Americans put their dates the wrong way round?
 

It should be 30/11/2009, not 11/30/2009.

Confuses the hell out of the dumb tart at the bank when I put commission cheques in :1orglaugh

And while I'm at it, why do you drive on the wrong side of the road too, really slowly.

1 - Henry Ford got to choose which side of the road, he lived where?
2. It makes more sense to say December 1st, 2009 instead of saying 1st of December 2009. They both are correct, one is just easier and sounds less snobby or aka British.

Everyone else is wrong. It should be:
Moon (Month) + Earth (Day) + Sun (Year)

Explain it please !


updating ...

that is a jew thing right ?

If you eurotards could get it right I'd gladly pay you $24,95...wait.

Which then begs the question, why did some snooty British dipshit decide that since the US was going use the right side of the road we'd better switch everything up and drive on the left?

No matter how you slice it that was a dumb decision. :D

True, all true.

While we're at it, why isn't the whole world up to speed on the correct way of writing monetary amounts?

USA & Canada: $1,895.00
Europe: $1,895,00

There's a comma where a decimal point should be. It's stupid and confusing at our banks. Of course I'd love to have my bank teller make a mistake and deposit 1.8 mill into my account so maybe I should just let it go. :D

I disagree, I think it's better to keep it in least-most significant (d/m/y), or most-least significant order (y/m/d). The m/d/y format breaks that. Would you change the order of hours, minutes, seconds?

I've noticed recently that PHP's mktime function uses the US date order rather than a more logical/global one.

Aren't the comma and decimals swapped rather than just the comma being substituted? $1.895,00

But how do you verbally say it most often.
Be truthful.

You are all wrong.

01DEC09

What is this someone was trying to tell me the other day about a billion being 100,000,000 in Europe? Do your billions really have only one hundred million in them?

When someone asks you what the date is do you say November 30th or 30th of November? I've always wondered.

People like what they're used to but for me it's more important what side of the car I'm driving from rather than what side of the road I'm on.

The Canadian Standards Association has adopted the ISO 8601 yyyy-MM-dd (e.g., 2009-06-09) date format

the chinese also use it so most likely it is the most widely used format, but that purely a guess.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_an...ion_by_country

2. I disagree, I believe it should go from smallest to largest - day / month / year. Why should it go month, day, year?

1. You seem to be under the mistaken belief that Henry Ford invented the motor car.

Ferdinand Verbiest invented the first car in the year 1672. It was the first ever car invented and was powered by steam. Ferdinand was an experimentalist and a missionary to China. He built his car in China. Hence you could rightly say, the first ever car was made in China.

In 1769, the first self-propelled car was designed and built by Nicholas Cugnot. His model of car was a three-wheeler.

Francois Isaac Rivaz, a Swiss inventor, designed and invented the first ever car with an internal combustion engine. This car engine was fueled with a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. This car was made in 1806. However, this design was not a success.

The car models designed and built by Samuel Brown, Samuel Morey and Etienne Lenoir were also a failure.

In 1881, Gustave Trouve not only designed and invented the first ever car powered by electricity but also demonstrated the functioning of this automobile at an International Exhibition of Electricity in Paris.

Four years later in 1885, Karl Benz designed and built a car powered by gasoline. This car was made in Germany. This was the first ever car to be granted a patent in 1886. The rest is history and the world acknowledged Karl Benz as the "Inventor of the modern automobile". He also invented the first ever car with an internal combustion flat engine in 1896.

You seem to be of the belief that the world consists of America and Europe.

It's time to take off the blinkers.

Its not the Americans that put the date the wrong way around its the rest of the world that are doing it wrong.
Like the rest of the world are ALL communists because they all have free health care.

To be honest, I'd probably say it the way I write it, ie 30th of November 2009.

I'll point out that according to a quick scan of the wikipedia page it seems only USA and Canada (to an extent) use the m/d/y format, but apart from that there's really no sense in arguing about what's best... it's unlikely it will change anytime soon.

Thanks for lesson and I do know he was not the first, did not say it in my post either.
I give ford credit for the assembly line and the BBQ briquette. His car was also the most sold and most popular. He gets credit for getting peoples asses in the seat and using them. Therefore he gets to write the guide and operational manual for them - which can dictate what side of the road to drive on.

Yeah reality is we had side walks and people used horses a lot still. The middle of the roads often were muddy and covered in horse crap. Nobody wanted to get out in horse shit and people who had cars had drivers. So you drive on a given side so your passengers can get in and out without getting horse shit and mud on you. At least I think that is why.

British right? Simple answer.

We went to war with you because we didn't WANT to be like you.





:1orglaugh
j/k

Since when did England go to war with the US? I'd better check my history books.

Are you fucking kidding me? The American Revolutionary War mean nothing to you?
You know that one were we split from the monarchy and started doing our own thing?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War

"The American Revolutionary War (1775?1783), also sometimes known as the American War of Independence, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen united former British colonies in North America, and concluded in a global war between several European great powers."

Kingdom of Great Britain: also known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain, was a sovereign state in northwest Europe, in existence from 1707 to 1801. It was created by the merger of the Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of England, under the Acts of Union 1707, to create a single kingdom encompassing the whole of the island of Great Britain and its minor outlying islands, excluding Ireland?which remained a separate jurisdiction under the British crown.

:upsidedow

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:helpme

Oh that one. Who won?

I blame the tubes...

I was about to say only women, non-ricer Asians and the elderly drive slowly, but then realized that covers probably a majority of the people on the road. :(

14:20
?zehn vor halb drei? (ten to half three) <- :error :helpme

woops, wrong thread

2009-12-01 actually makes most sense

it would follow same logic as "2 lbs and 5 oz" "1.2kg = 1 kg and 200 grams" biggest unit on the left... :2 cents:

It sounds awkward to pronounce it, but it's probably just a matter of getting used to:
"2009 December 1st"

Don't you know by now that whoever has the bigger bombs gets to make all the rules?

Date should be given by level of forgetfulness.
Day = easiest to forget
Month = pretty hard to forget
Year = damn hard to forget.

So day - month - year.
When I ask someone the date, I do not need them to remind me of the year and month.

YYYY-MM-DD is what I prefer for sorting purposes.

I agree, day/month/year is the best format. Good luck on changing that though

americans are right the rest of the world isn't.

We say the same thing about you guys, I finally got used to the way you put the month in the middle since I been doing business with an England company for 20 years now. Still messes me up sometimes matching invoice to po's. :upsidedow

Great thread.

I prefer the ISO format also

Until the Brits figure out how to operate a toothbrush I think they should refrain from attempting to educate the rest of the world.

this thread would be nowhere without wikipedia.

So you're racist as well as being a fuckwit? Nice combination :thumbsup

(added to ignore list)

British isn't a race. Goddamn you people are stupid. :1orglaugh

This thread blows.

The most important date in the United States of America is.......

The 4th of July

Figure that one out ;)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...erio_Oeste.png

Spot the UK :2 cents:

NO it's not. I hate seieng videos from Europe and have a date like 12/3/2008 makes me think it's Dec 3rd when they actually mean March 12th. Yes REALLY less confusing.

MONTH-DAY-YEAR makes the most sense since that's the way we say it. If I ask you what the date it is what are you going to say? You are going to say "It's December 1st, 2009" Well translate that

December=MONTH, 1st=DAY, 2009=YEAR. So 12/01/2009 makes perfect sense.

Yes 4th of July, not 4th July.

04/07 is not "4th of July" in Eurospeak it's "4th July". We don't celebrate "4th July". When I ask yout the EXACT date of the signing of the Delcaration of Independance do you say "4th, July, 1776"? No you say "July 4th 1776" or 07/04/1776

Yeah, but who is "we"? 250-300 million people out of 6 billion?

If you include leading zeros (and flip the direction of sort) then DD-MM-YYYY should also sort properly. :)

"flip the direction of sort" ? :helpme