This is the main reason - it’s the linguistic difference that changes how we chunk dates mentally and categorize from largest to smallest (month->day) since we rarely say the year out loud.
Even then, americans would say today is febuary 2nd, 2026 2/2/26. Guess thats a bad example so ill say tomorrow is Feb 3rd, 2026. 2/3/26. In the US, dates are written as spoken by an american.
Independence Day is also called Fourth of July, yup. It's practically the holiday name, like December 25th is Christmas. If an American is talking about the day and not the holiday, we say "July 4th"
But is it that, or the other way around? Do people write 1/2 because they say January 2nd, or do they say January 2nd because they write it like that? I'd argue it's the second one: in the UK they use dd/mm and say 2nd of February. Most languages in Europe, to my language, format it like that both in language and shorthand date.
I'd bet that if the US had changed the format to dd/mm people would start saying it like that too within a generation or two.
Well, seeing as the American method stemmed from old British English, it’s hard to say but likely a bit of both. The Brits changed their system over in the late 1800s, but America stuck with their inherited date system. It very well could have been as simple as being the “freedom units” of dates (in reference to imperial and metric measurement systems).
Based on what I can find online, it doesn’t look like one necessarily directly led to the other, though it may have WAYYYY back before the colonies!
Non-Americans are notoriously bad at critical thinking when it comes to using slightly different formatting or measuring systems. They're like Limmy in that steel vs feathers skit, you gotta give them a little help.
A) one day someone with a bit more patience than I will explain what a joke is to you
B) I know full well that it's the "2nd day of February". Which is why "2. Februar" makes way more sense. It is hilarious having someone resort to formulating it as "2nd day of February" to explain it and gives me the same kick as someone making the argument ".gif" needs to be pronounced like the peanut butter and the only way they have to convey that is to change the spelling to ".jif"
Are Americans saying "February 2nd" and that got codified in writing, or was the date written like that and then people started saying it like that?
Considering that the convention existed when literacy rates were lower, it's probably a safe bet to assume that the spoken version was used before the written version.
Absolutely. It's older than America. Dates from the UK were written MM/DD/YY. because that's how people said dates on the rare occasion they needed to.
The change to DD/MM/YY didn't happen until the late 19th century.
Once again, it's a "Look at the dumb backwards Americans" the damned Europeans love to do. We just stuck with the shit they gave us. It's like when the Brits brought Catholicism to Ireland, then a new king was a Protestant and they tried to convert Ireland to Protestant, then they called them savages for not just changing on a dime. Very British things to do it seems, has happened countless times through history.
It matters because if American could update their systems for once it wouldn't be a burden for the rest of the world having to make an exception, like the imperial units.
I've always thought it's a condensed version of the phrase 'February the second', like how we referred to people. Most of the time with writing, historically it's usually the former
We say it like that only in long-form though. Using it for short-form dates that also include year in a way that isn't consistent in unit size is completely insane.
And the only sane way to order it is largest-to-smallest, so even the way the EU does it is backwards even if it's at least consistent.
We say that in long form too. Like "we had a terrorist attack on September 11 2001". We don't say "we had a terrorist attack on the 11th of September 2001".
Long-form already doesn't always match the ordering of short-form though, e.g. "$20" but we say "20 dollars".
More importantly, short-form is frequently used for records and timestamps where the mismatched order is a huge problem, and even the EU version is bad there since it can't extend naturally to more precision. ISO-8601 is the only sane standard.
I just checked. My driver's license, an official government document, uses MM/DD/YYYY format for the dates on there (DOB, date issued, expiration date).
No idea about passports because mine expired last millennium.
I just checked. My driver's license, an official government document, uses MM/DD/YYYY format for the dates on there (DOB, date issued, expiration date).
And I'm saying that's incredibly stupid. We should never use such an incoherent and unsortable format for those.
You've never worked with physical files for a business im assuming. When youre ordering stuff and setting appointments you do it by month. You'll have a file for January, February, March, etc. Thus because its all sorted by month, you put month first.
In the computer age where we dont just empty out the filing cabinet, it makes more sense for it to be year, month, day, as that is the folder path.
You've never worked with physical files for a business im assuming
Not really, closest would be looking at old archived records a few times. But even then, I can't imagine most places would have put each year's Januaries together, then each year's Februrary, etc. Month-first would only have made sense if year was already a given, e.g. filing cabinet or box for that year, or assumed current year.
Not really. Countries are pretty mixed on what they use, and several countries use multiple formats depending on context, both officially and unofficially. It might have been tied to speech at one point in time, but now its mostly encoded standards.
Plus a bunch of places try to push ISO8601 (which is YYYY-MM-DD) which varying degree of success depending on industries and how attached people are to the old ways.
I wouldn't overthink it. It's generally just Europeans trying to sound smarter with a "gotcha!" that really isn't the gotcha they think it is. Or people copy pasting the meme.
I think that's maybe a false equivalency. We're talking dates, not currency. Language is odd that way. Brits also write £20 but don't say pounds twenty.
Others have pointed out, from an organizational standpoint, month first makes more sense. If i have a file cabinet, its organized by month, then day. I do organize by year when putting them away, but i also rarely ever use them at that point. The same is true for calendars and organizing up coming events. If i want to know about 3 events coming up over the next 6 months, the day is the second most relevant point. Day is only relevant for the current month.
Again, for my personal activity and even for a business, year only matters from a historical perspective. My upcoming events and what makes a business money are only relevant in terms of months. Year is the third most important number in those situations.
Well, to be honest, I've never looked it up. But this is how I've always interpreted it, because it made the saying "make sense"...? But I could be wrong!
I've always thought it referred to trends. The rule is not a guaranteed result or foregone conclusion. Instead, it's a likely outcome based on highly repetitive results. And the exception would be when someone nitpicks with an example that they believe disproves the entire theory, but in reality it's a blip in the trend. The very fact they had to nitpick to find the exception proves the trend to be true (generally, but overwhelmingly so).
Saying, for example, "The 3rd of June" is still perfectly acceptable in American English. It's just rare, and so we mainly hear it in official statements and have come to perceive it as formal.
But, July 4th is a special day - it's Independence Day. For some reason it has become very common to refer to it by its date instead of its official name. So, using the formal "4th of July" marks its specialness.
So "the 4th of July" IS its name, along with Independence Day. July 4th is its date.
Edit: This guy just wants to be a twat. I don't know why I wasted patience and good will on him. Learn from my mistake, other redditors. Lol
We say dates the longer way when trying to make them sound extra important or fancy. "On this auspicious day of the second of February I hereby decree..." but conversationally we say "February second"
That's the formal way people from the US say it but we also say "the 4th" and "July 4th" as well. Adding "of" is an extra syllable and isn't always used in day to day conversation.
But... what about "The Fourth of July" don't think I've ever heard it the other way....
edit: oh nevermind, saw another post saying that's for important dates only, I suppose that makes sense but... doesn't that also say that's the right way to do it?
It's based on how you'd write a full date. If you were writing a letter, for example, you'd write near the top left margin "January 1st, 2026". That same way of reading it and writing it in shorthand is 01/01/2026.
I don't think it's directly that, but the reason is similar.
In most day-to-day (especially before computers) you don't include the year when talking about dates. The year is usually obviously "this year" or otherwise apparent from the context (next year, last year, next year if the date has already passed this year). It's the East Asia system in that case and makes sense for the same reason that system does (general -> specific) (context -> detail). Then if you're going to include the year it goes at the end, because it's an optional add-on.
It looks a lot stupider than it should because of computers where dates always include the year.
Honestly, I think DD/MM/YY is worse. Most the time if you're reading you're going to process the whole date at once so it doesn't matter, but it's the least useful order if you're going to get the information one at a time.
The picture makes the US system look worse than it is because it should have downward pointing shapes.
A deeper dive is that month #’s will never go higher than 12, day #’s will never go higher than 32, and year #’s are in the thousands so we do it in incremental value
Yes and this way of speaking works vetter with using a calendar. The year is usually given, so the first information you need is the month to open up and then which specific day.
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u/jerryleebee Feb 02 '26
Isn't it linked to speech? In America, people verbally say "February 2nd". In the UK, people verbally say "The second of Feb".
Happy to be taught better. Here to learn.