Newsgroups: sci.lang
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From: jedhudson@cix.compulink.co.uk ("John Hudson")
Subject: Re: Wierd U.S. Date Order : M,D,Y
Message-ID: <E64nJF.FHo@cix.compulink.co.uk>
Organization: Compulink Information eXchange
References: <3310BDFC.570A@scruznet.com>
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 21:54:51 GMT
Lines: 31

In article <3310BDFC.570A@scruznet.com>, darwin@scruznet.com 
(Mike Wright) wrote:


> The US military uses DD/MM/YY (all two-digit numbers, e.g., 
23/02/97)
> for the short form. The long form is written in the same 
order, as shown
> above. I had a hard time getting used to the civilian 
M(M)/D(D)/YY after
> I retired. I still tend to write 23 Feb 97 on my personal 
checks.

> -- 
> Mike Wright
> ____________________________________
> email: darwin@scruznet.com
> WWW:   http://www.scruz.net/~darwin/language.html


I'm fascinated that the conventions are not uniform even 
within the States.  The problem is I work for a multinational 
and we get dates in spreadsheets from USA, Canada, Europe, 
England etc. all of which are potentially ambiguous. So we 
finish up using one of three formats at different times or at 
the same time on different bits of paper, depending who the 
data is destined for,  MM-DD-YY, DD-MM-YY, or YY-MM-DD.  This 
is worse than the millenium bug.


JEH
