Boring question - date conventions

[Matt Black]

Having a slack day at the office...!

Question: why do Americans write the date as Month-day-year? We Brits tend to have the convention of Day-month-year eg: today is 23/09/05 not 09-23-05. Our system seems slightly more logical than yours as a day is smaller than a month which in turn is smaller than a year so there's an obvious progression in our convention. Similarly, we would tend to say that today is "23rd September" or "The twenty-third of September", although "September 23rd" is no unheard of.

Anyone know how and why these differences between us arose?

(Not sure whether here or the History Forum is the best place to post this as it is a trivia question albeit with an historical element to it - doubtless a friendly mod will decide)

[ETA - if 9/11 had happened over here we would call it 11/9 or more likely 11th September; fortunately (?!) our own terrorist atrocities happened on 7/7 so there can be no confusion!]

 

[padredurand]

Maybe for the same reasons we drive on the other side of the road, our cars have hoods and trunks not bonnets and boots and our race tracks -be it horses or cars- run counter-clockwise.

There are probably thousands of things we do or say differently from our dear cousins across the pond.

 

[Matt Black]

Supplementary question: why do Americans say "9/11" but also say "The Fourth of July" rather than "July 4(th)"?

 

[just-want-peace]

'Cause that's the way it's always been done!!!!

 

[just-want-peace]

In addition the following illustrates the logical(?) history of many parameters that we now essentially have no idea of the origin.

"We've always done it that way!"; BUT WHY??

Does the statement, "We've always done it that way" ring any bells?..

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches.
That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?
Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US Railroads.
Why did the English build them like that?
Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used!
Why did "they" use that gauge then?
Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.
So who built those old rutted roads?
Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts in the roads?
Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing!
The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.
And bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's rear-end came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.

Now the twist to the story...

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.
So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's behind!

Interesting, but scary at the same time!!!

 

[Jim1999]

The fourth of July fits better in song and poetry........We tend to write month-day-year in Canada as well. It is bank policy and I suppose we tend to follow the bank on this one.

Cheers,

Jim

 

[Gib]

I don't care how they put it. Just make sure I get paid every other Friday.

 

[Alcott]

I presume we write 09/23/05 because it follows how we would say it: "September (9) 23rd, 2005."

Why not ask something more important, such as why we boil our tea to make it hot, ice it to make it cold, add sugar to make it sweet and lemon to make it sour?

 

[blackbird]

Originally posted by Matt Black:
Having a slack day at the office...!

Question: why do Americans write the date as Month-day-year? We Brits tend to have the convention of Day-month-year eg: today is 23/09/05 not 09-23-05. Our system seems slightly more logical than yours as a day is smaller than a month which in turn is smaller than a year so there's an obvious progression in our convention. Similarly, we would tend to say that today is "23rd September" or "The twenty-third of September", although "September 23rd" is no unheard of.

Anyone know how and why these differences between us arose?

July 3, 1776!!!!!

Hey, just a joke there, ole Chap!!! A few of us preacher boys toured the UK last year---while at Gatewick--we were presenting our passports---and the Customs agent was there

"You from the United States??"

"Sure am!!"

"Well, then!!! Welcome home, Chap!!!"

 

[Johnv]

Originally posted by just-want-peace:
'Cause that's the way it's always been done!!!!

I think you're on to something there. The Declaration of Independence reads "July 4th, 1776", and it was written by mostly by persons of English (and a few German) gentility. I suppose that has a lot to do with why we use the date convention that we do.

 

[padredurand]

ISO 8601 standard date notation.

The international standard date notation is YYYY-MM-DD where YYYY is the year in the usual Gregorian calendar, MM is the month of the year between 01 (January) and 12 (December), and DD is the day of the month between 01 and 31.

For example, the fourth day of February in the year 1995 is written in the standard notation as 1995-02-04

Way too much information about time notation standards <<<--link here

 

[Carolina Baptist]

I just looked at my discharge from the Coast Guard. The date is listed as 87 MAR 25. That's year/month/day

The date the form was accepted for use by millitary is 1 JUL 79. That's day/month/year.

We can't seem to be consistent one the same form.

 

[NaasPreacher (C4K)]

I like the YYYY-M-D format the best as it is so computer compatible.

Posted.

200509240533GMT

Matt's issue does cause a lot of confusion for travellers, or for those who do business on both signs of the Pond.

 

[Magnetic Poles]

Reminds me of the joke asking if there is a Fourth of July in England. The answer? Of course there is, it is just not Independence Day.

Wasn't it Sir Winston Churchill who said the US and Britain were two countries separated by a common language?

And what about that thing with the 26th letter of the alphabet. Zee, Zed, Izzard?

 

[fromtheright]

Question: why do Americans write the date as Month-day-year?

I don't know but I know the US military in all its wisdom, tends to use day/month/year, as in 4 OCT 05, with the exception of, in the case of the Navy, performance evals that are year/month/day (e.g., 05MAY23). Go figure.


Matt Black,

Supplementary question: why do Americans say "9/11" but also say "The Fourth of July" rather than "July 4(th)"?

I couldn't resist because it bothers me, that Americans refer to it as the Fourth of July rather than Independence Day.

 

[BobRyan]

More efficient for sorting if they used year month day.

But I suppose that saying the same year "a lot" got them to the shorter form of month/day. It sorts within the year - but not across years.


Just a guess.

 

[Matt Black]

Thanks for all your answers. But no-one has yet got to the root of when, how and why we diverged in our notation....