marshg246
VIP MEMBER
Dates where the month is 12 or less and the day is 12 or less cause confusion between the US and much of the rest of the world. Since a fully written out day is usually like March 12, 1950 in the US we would write 03/12/1950 or 3/12/50. Much of the rest of the world writes 12/3/50 (or variants with the day first). As a programmer, I hate both as neither is sortable and converting from how dates are actually stored is a PITA. 1950-03-12 or 19500312 sorts and is clear and easy to break combine into the stored number. Of course I'm not advocating to use that. here. Generally a date/time is 1950-03-12 07:20:00 (7:20am on March 12, 1950) which is completely sortable as text or with the dashed and colon removed as text, or stored as a number (as they are internally)
BTW, the US is a melting pot and not all people US month/day/year so it can be confusing here too.
There are many ways to write a date that cannot be confused:
Most of the worlds military: 12MAR50 - 12MAR1950 - 12-MAR-1950 (two digits years was a big problem at Y2K time!)
Written out: March 12, 1950 - 12 March 50 (again, two digits years are not clear but for almost everything here they would be)
Semi-Computer, sortable: 1950-MAR-12
In other words, keep the textual full or short month and use the 4-digit year and everyone should understand.
BTW, the US is a melting pot and not all people US month/day/year so it can be confusing here too.
There are many ways to write a date that cannot be confused:
Most of the worlds military: 12MAR50 - 12MAR1950 - 12-MAR-1950 (two digits years was a big problem at Y2K time!)
Written out: March 12, 1950 - 12 March 50 (again, two digits years are not clear but for almost everything here they would be)
Semi-Computer, sortable: 1950-MAR-12
In other words, keep the textual full or short month and use the 4-digit year and everyone should understand.