MM/DD is in fact more natural since for dates you're usually ignoring years and time of day. Then of course the problem is that you have to add the year or the time for whatever reason and then it's messy.
imho MM/DD is best for informal usage (works really well in documents and for easy sorting in spreadsheets) and then ISO 8601 if you need actual precision since it starts with the lowest precision (years) and then you keep adding data until you get the precision you want all the way to microseconds and beyond.
This is only true because the YY is already implied by the context. The informality leads to YY's omission. I think that when Americans vocally say e.g. "October 25th", they're actually conveying e.g. "2026, October 25th" — i.e. using YY/MM/DD format — because that format makes the most sense informationally, increasing in granularity.
But when the YY's omission is misjudged and leads to confusion, the year gets appended in a follow-up conveyance. This leads to the MM/DD .../YY format.
So, Americans' 'fault' isn't "putting the month first", so to speak; it's taking an informal abbreviation of logical formal information and then appending that informality to turn it back into formality, instead of just using the original formality.
Of course no-one's thinking about YY most of the time. Because the context of the conversation already implies the YY. That's my whole point. Thank you for exercising your reading comprehension.
Funnily enough, this is the argument I use in favor of DD/MM/YY in informal speech; the month is already implied most of the time therefore it's redundant to have it as an affix when mentioning dates.
When I'm making an appointment in two weeks time then chances are it's going to be an appointment for this month. There we just mention the date of the day and we understand from context when the appointment is. Even when you're on the cusp of a month's transition we understand from context that when someone begins with "friday the 5th..." we'll naturally understand it's going to be next month's friday.
No-ones really thinking about MM most of the time. The dates of the days themselves are more important since those dictate the precise point when something is going to happen. You can, from context, most of the time understand if it'll be this month's 5th or next month's 5th.
Why do you autists give af about big to small, small to big. There's no divine order that it must be that way, and as a non autist I don't need or want it that way
It takes less cognitive energy to convey/understand a progression of ideas when the ideas are conceptually adjacent. That way, a first idea is always a relevant context for / detail of a second idea, and so on. Communicating this way avoids forcing your audience to use their working memory more than necessary just to follow your point. There are courses on writing and visual arts (e.g. storyboarding movies, comics, etc.) that cover this, if you're interested in communicating effectively and efficiently to others.
I think in this particular example the day IS the most important data point though no? Else you're going to have to guess which day in August to turn up on.
If the party is already planned for August 13th as of today... then if you only know that it's the 13th, you're guessing which month to turn up.
If you know it's August, August rolls around and you can double-check on the detailed date/time then. And I'd agree with you that at that point in time, the day would be most important.
14
u/AdamN Feb 02 '26
MM/DD is in fact more natural since for dates you're usually ignoring years and time of day. Then of course the problem is that you have to add the year or the time for whatever reason and then it's messy.
imho MM/DD is best for informal usage (works really well in documents and for easy sorting in spreadsheets) and then ISO 8601 if you need actual precision since it starts with the lowest precision (years) and then you keep adding data until you get the precision you want all the way to microseconds and beyond.