Asklemmy

Most significant digits first. You write the thousands place before the hundreds, you write the month before the day. Of course, the whole argument is blow away when you write the year at the end instead of the beginning. (ISO YYYY-MM-DD dates for the win.)

Year is the most significant (read: big) unit in the list, but it is the least significant (pertinent to daily life) unless you're a time traveler. Of month and day, month is more significant than day in both size and pertinence, so it gets ordered first. But when sorting things into folders or file naming conventions, biggest category descending down to smaller categories is always the best.

American here. No idea. Either DD/MM/YYYY or YYYY/MM/DD are more logical, but here we are. When naming/renaming files and including a date in the name, I'll usually do YYYYMMDD format somewhere. If I'm emailing/texting others, I use MM/DD/YYYY.

Fun little story, the department I work in recently began to work with some people over in the UK, and even though I brought up the date format differences, we've already had someone of gett the month and day flipped and it caused some confusion on our end.

I write the date a bit different depending on which format its going on.

For example, computers like to sort things alphabetically. If I'm writing electronic diary entries, I'll name the document as "2025-06-01."

If I'm hand signing a legal document, I prefer to sign it as "01JUN2025" or "01JUN25" if space is an issue.

If the format is preselected and deviation isn't allowed, I'll just write it like everyone else does.

Personally, I like dating things in ascending or descending order. Day month year, or year month day.

Ignoring the coding side of things...

It's relative. And also works easier to navigate the calendar. If we're planning something for next year I pull up next year's calendar. If it's this years and we're planning something for later this year, when I hear you say August, that's the month I go to. But if you say the 27th of August, The first thing I heard was the 27th which could possibly be this month or next month if it's say the 28th today.

To make sure its not December right away. Fuck that entire month. Everyone hates December so much they throw the years biggest party at the end of it.

The month tells you more about conditions like weather but that's kinda it.

regardless of the month, I think what matters first is to know what day of the month you are in

You're telling me that if you have a list of scheduled dates in the near future to meet with clients/patients/whatever, you first want them sorted by day, and then month?

So this list is the order you want to see these in?

• 4/5/25
• 8/7/25
• 15/6/25
• 16/5/25
• 23/6/25

Doesn't it make way more sense to see them sorted by month first, then day, so that they're actually in chronological order.

• 5/4/25
• 5/16/25
• 6/15/25
• 6/23/25
• 7/8/25

The only way you could defend the former listing is if you're also arguing that it makes sense to sort the list by the middle column, and hopefully we all agree that is just absurd. We don't alphabetize people by their middle names. You don't look up a word in the dictionary starting with the letter in the middle.

I jest, but I think this illustrates a real-life, commonplace example of when it makes sense. I agree that MM/DD/YYYY is not in order of magnitude, but I do believe it's in order of most significance to least significance given the timescales we are typically dealing with.

Out of curiosity: do you also find it weird that (I'm assuming) you use hour:minute order when reading the clock, instead of minute:hour? Would saying the minute first make more sense to you?

As an American it was just what we were taught. However, when I started creating code and being pedantic about organizing files by date, I now prefer YYYYMMDD format as it is, chronologically speaking, superior when prefacing files with it. In this case, in my opinion, it's better to have the year and then month first prior to day.

To each their own, variety is the spice of life.

Because the month is bigger and provides more context on it's own. You figure out the month first then place yourself within that scale.

Example:

"It's May (immediately tells us the context of 31days, spring, etc.) It is the 30th, so there's one day left in May"

Vs

"It's the 30th (provides no context except that it's not February). it's may, so there's one day left in May"

So both lead to the same conclusion, the first way just gives the limiting parameter/most context first.

Similar reasoning why the month is the primary separation on calendars.

Another example that follow this same principle, you tell time HH/mm to provide the larger context first, not mm/HH.

The short answer is, it's what we were taught in school. Like many preferences, it's shaped by the culture we grow up and live in.

I’m sorry but it doesn’t make sense to me.

Of course not, you were raised and live in a different culture; so, your preferences are different.

Ultimately, the right answer is ISO8601. It's unambiguous and sorts well on computers. But, I don't think any culture is teaching that as the primary way to write dates, so we're stuck with the crappy ways.

Am American and I hate the MM/DD/YY(YY) format. Unfortunately its what's been taught and used as the standard date format for a long time.

I much prefer the ISO standard of YYYY-MM-DD. It's the superior format logically moving from the largest calendar unit to the smallest. Also superior for date ordering files.

It's two less syllables to say "April Fourth" than "The Fourth of April".

That's about the only advantage it has.

Edit:

I was thinking about this grammatically. English is an Adjective first language where the modifying adjective goes before the base noun.

In my example, April is the adjective. It tells the reader what kind of Fourth it is.

It's at least a kind of logic.

Because the day doesn't matter when you work every day between your three jobs that won't give you 40 hours in order to not give you health insurance.

ITT: defensive answers and ISO-8601 supporters.

I can't say it matters to me that much what order it's in, but that's just the same order we say it in when fully written out. March 23, 2025. 03/23/2025.

Why do Americans use MM/DD/YY for date, but not mm:ss:hh for time? Doesn’t that make the same amount of sense?

Probably because in english it's the way they speak about dates (and the fact US kinda isolated themselves before WWII).

They started to write dates as they speak dates.