From BestATN@xxx.xxx Wed Jun 9 19:46:39 1999
X-Digest-Num: 162
Message-ID: <44114.162.954.959273824@eGroups.com>
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 1999 22:46:39 EDT
From: BestATN@xxx.xxx
Subject: Writing dates

In a message dated 6/9/99 9:50:30 AM Eastern Daylight Time, minots@texas.net 
writes:

<< Has there ever been any dialog on why the order is month/day/year and
whether it should be so? American English is one of the few languages
in the world with that order. British English, Spanish, Russian, and
practically every language in the world (although not Japanese, which
has year/month/day) have day/month/year. >>

For over 20 years I've been writing dates in the format (cc)yymmddw, where 
cc=century (optional), yy=year, mm=month, dd=day, and w=day of week (A-G, 
starting with Monday), e.g., 
Today is Wednesday, June 9, 1999, so I write this date as 990609C. This is 
the shortest constant length format which is easy to use. (I may start using 
A-L for the month; I hadn't thought of that before.) I chose YMD because the 
decimal number system has the most significant digits first, i.e. left, and I 
use Monday as the starting point of the week because, even though Sunday is 
the traditional American beginning of the week, it seems obvious to me that 
Saturday and Sunday are the end of the week (the 'weekend'.), and that Monday 
is the beginning of the week. The Russian calendar, among others, does it 
this way too.
Steven