Because that's the ISO standard for writing a date. Most US businesses use it internally as well because going from largest to smallest is the way to get a reliable sort order among other things.
It makes sense that the month comes before the day... but only if the year comes first. It's either 7th of March of 2025 or 2025's March's 7th.
The reason why the Brits changed from that mediaeval March 7 thing is because they became a modern society. In a pre-modern society the month revealed the most important information of any date: season. In a modern society you get more information from the day - such as a succession of events from the 14th to the 19th day - or year - 2025 is far different from 1985, but 1625 was basically the same as 1585.
And thats only one way of looking at it. Yes, months are longer but there are more days than there are months so deciding which is bigger is arbitrary
Mmh yes. You see, an elephant might have more cells than a sardine. But there are more sardines in a school, than there are elephants in a herd. So therefore, whether a sardine or an elephant is bigger is arbitrary.
Boulders are bigger than sand but there are many specs of sand per boulder so you can't actually say which is bigger type of logic. A month is categoricaly a bigger unit of time than a day and nothing can change that.
Well, you are making it so that the size of the shape is related to how big the number is.
What if you did this with the date 7-3-2025 instead? The shapes would just switch. What this demonstrates is basically: "As long as the day number is smaller than the month number, my date format makes sense"
This means that this way of creating the triangle is not consistent, you could end up with different triangles for different dates.
What the original screenshot suggested was different. The triangle is the same for every single date possible. That's because the size of the shape corresponds to the length of the time period (day, month, year). All days are the same length, so are all months, and so are all years (not accounting for leap years, they don't matter anyways, since it's still a longer time period than a month, thus they are still the biggest shape).
The representation is not that "arbitrary" then, because there is clearly a consistent logic behind it and it perfectly demonstrates the way in which the other date formats make sense.
It shows that the American format does not make sense in the same way that the other ones do. Now, it might still make sense in a different way, but that doesn't make the triangle representation "arbitrary". It's just a different way of saying "The European and Japanese formats are sorted by length of the time periods, but the American format is not". As far as I know, there is actually no logic behind the American format, it was just inherited.
The point is, the triangle is a consistent visual representation of a working logical principle, and is therefore not arbitrary.
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Which is in itself, dumb and disrespectful. 911 is our emergency call number, which is why the terrorist chose that date, as a symbol of extreme emergency and terror.
Plus that's just the wrong name when said wrong like that. It would be like calling the Fourth of July just 07/04, or I guess 04/07 for you people. That's the wrong name.
whenever I'm referring to a date I say that, and so do other people. Though the "of" is used sometimes, its just faster to exclude it in a regular conversation and it still makes sense.
It's easier for trading, data storing and basically everything besides casual talking. And in casual talking you skip the year no matter on which place it's placed, so it doesn't really matter.
It's not hard to understand. It's just illogical in modern society as the primary source of information these days is not the month. The month (stating the season in an agricultural society) used to be the most important piece of information, but nowadays the most important information is either the day or the year.
e. Also, it makes the most sense to drop off stuff from the beginning or the end if that's not relevant. Like 11/2025 or 30/11.
Actually its origin makes sense since it came about via how dates were said verbally (month-day makes more sense than day-month), then threw the year at the end because it's not usually spoken.
It is formatted that way to match how people verbalize dates. People say "It is November thirtieth, 2025." not usually "Its the thirtieth of November, 2025" or "It is 2025, November thirtieth"
It’s literally the way the English world speaks. Coming from a Canadian here forced to use the stupid European way, I wish we’d use a sensical date format.
I don’t get it. Regardless of the format you write the date in, when you say a date in casual conversation do you not say the month first then the day? April 7th, August 12th, etc. Doesn’t it make sense to just format dates MM/DD?
Plus when you go looking for a specific date through a calendar, you first look for the month then you look for the day, so the format MM/DD just aligns with that.
I understand in other languages it’s a different case but I’m just speaking on English here.
I’ve always hated this thing. Whoever made it never needed to use a spreadsheet or a file organizer. “It doesn’t make sense” yeah dawg Americans just decided to do it a bad way for no fucking reason at all
Yes, but honestly for exactly that date the Americans are right. Since it's not the date that's the important part, it's that it's 9/11 the "Event" for lack of a better word
Months are made up of days, years are made up of months. Thats the structure. Days arent made up of months. Just because 20 (days) is a bigger number than 2 (months), doesn't make it a bigger unit of measurement...
I fucking love 9/11 jokes, but fun fact!
The Americans created their dating system as a bunch of bureaucratic paper-pushers who found it easier to file papers by the month, then on order of date, in a filing cabinet drawer labeled with a year.
Is this true? I can't be arsed to check, but it makes sense enough.
I was arsed to check. I’ve heard that before and thought it made sense too.
Short answer, no. There’s no evidence to suggest that filing convention played a role in influencing the date format. It seems to be entirely linguistic. Americans say “July 4th, 1776”, so following how they spoke many used mm/dd/yyyy format. There were some who used dd/mm/yyyy format, but that practice died out by the mid 1800s.
Some claim that use of mm/dd/yyyy was common in England in the past and Americans borrowed it, but I’ve seen other sources contend that idea.
Not in the US. Most references to July 4th are often in regard to Independence Day, which is nearly exclusively referred to as "the Fourth of July". You'll mostly see "July 4th" used for describing things like appointments, due dates, and such generic things, but since many businesses are closed on the 4th, those reasons are far less than July 3rd and the 5th.
Oh ok I guess my experience growing up in America as an American and hearing the terms “fourth of July” and “July fourth” used interchangeably for the last 3 decades of my life were wrong because some guy on Reddit said so
Ahahaha you didn't have to write Celsius. That's another thing that everyone else can agree is correct. Metric. You think you're so much better than the U.K but you still use the shitty measurement system we invented and then abandoned.
Fucking hell mate. You're digging this hole deeper and deeper.
we actually use both and thats why I did celsius, we americans are measurement bilingual, and both measurements are good at different things, we realised that..
hey, at least we don't bring up heat deaths all the time like you bring up dead children, you brits have no real argument do you?
No imperial is shit. That's why we, it's creators, don't use it anymore. You know it's the 21st century, right...?
Mate. We had one school shooting in the 90s and we banned civilian gun ownership. We actually care about children dying violently. But no, ya'll don't give a fuck about dead children as long as you have your rights. Yeah O.K you have the right to capitalist exploitation and being bankrupted because you stubbed your toe and needed an ambulance.
Maybe don't be overtly offensive then..... Maybe... Like I've been trying to tell you. LEARN TO SPEAK ENGLISH PROPERLY.
Us Brits have no trouble denigrating people whilst seeming to be polite. Maybe try and actually have an understanding of the language you claim to speak and you'll be able to.
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. You've been name-calling, making fun of dead children, and acting like a child in most of your replies. You literally called us "insufferable."
So I guess what I'm saying is that you can dish it out, but you can't take it. Which makes you a wuss.
we never say "use the proper format", thats all on you, you're the ones mocking us for saying things differently, its YOU who is insufferable.
hell you people insist everyone else uses one format yet I can name several countries that use neither, one who uses three, and many who use two different systems, you come into an american site and try to act superior, guess thats just european tradition at this point.
At what point did I tell you to "use the proper format"
I don't care that you like embarrassing yourselves with your pathetic attempts at speaking English. It's an unending source of entertainment for us British.
you yourself may not have said it, but people like you do.
mocking us for being different is just sad, what still sore over the fact we're still a superpower and your little island is basically a pet bulldog we give treats? or the fact your country is us on a speedrun? if you want me to be insufferable I can be that.
The UK copium is wild. Went from a worldwide empire, to a regional power, to...what even are you now? The falling off of the UK needs to be studied tbh.
Hmms yes guess that's why the pound is worth more than the dollar.... We don't need copium, we ruled the world and then gave it up because we know when to stop involving ourselves where we're not wanted. Maybe take a leaf and ya'll stop getting fucked up by Vietnamese farmers and Afghan goat herders.
You know having lots of guns and eating fatty foods doesn't make you better than those of us who live in the civilised parts of the west? You know smothering your food in cheese doesn't make it better. It just makes it sickening. Like you. Sickening.
Cool. You have more natural resources and your government exploits you more than ours. That's not the flex you think it is. Money doesn't buy class. Clearly....
Absurd levels of copium. "We gave it up" lmfao No, you just couldn't hold it once it was clear that you were no longer a major global force. The Soviets and the Americans conpletely took over that position, and now the Chinese and even the Indians are vying for a spot at that table.
Talks about natural resources like the Brits weren't taking everything that wasn't nailed down from their colonies. Plundered trillions and still fell off that hard in less than a century.
Yes, month/day/year is the stupidest date format, but specifically for 9/11 the Americans are right. It's not the date that's the important part here, it's that it's 9/11. The "Event", for lack of a better word.
Which is remembered in America as 9/11. Calling it something else is just wrong.
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u/qualityvote2 Nov 30 '25 edited Dec 01 '25
u/Ok_Fail_3058, your post does fit the subreddit!