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As an American it was just what we were taught. However, when I started creating code and being pedantic about organizing files by date, I now prefer YYYYMMDD format as it is, chronologically speaking, superior when prefacing files with it. In this case, in my opinion, it's better to have the year and then month first prior to day.
To each their own, variety is the spice of life.
This is the only format that truly makes sense, as it is both unambiguous and, as you noted, sortable.
ISO is my true north.
What you say is interesting. Having a way of organizing time that suits your needs. That's why I asked if there was any benefit in the way Americans (and apparently also Chinese) represent time.
Because the month is bigger and provides more context on it's own. You figure out the month first then place yourself within that scale.
Example:
"It's May (immediately tells us the context of 31days, spring, etc.) It is the 30th, so there's one day left in May"
Vs
"It's the 30th (provides no context except that it's not February). it's may, so there's one day left in May"
So both lead to the same conclusion, the first way just gives the limiting parameter/most context first.
Similar reasoning why the month is the primary separation on calendars.
Another example that follow this same principle, you tell time HH/mm to provide the larger context first, not mm/HH.
Surprised I had to scroll all the way to the bottom of the comments to find this answer
The short answer is, it's what we were taught in school. Like many preferences, it's shaped by the culture we grow up and live in.
Iβm sorry but it doesnβt make sense to me.
Of course not, you were raised and live in a different culture; so, your preferences are different.
Ultimately, the right answer is ISO8601. It's unambiguous and sorts well on computers. But, I don't think any culture is teaching that as the primary way to write dates, so we're stuck with the crappy ways.
There is an American subculture teaching and using ISO 8601; the US military. They donβt call it that, but I learned later thatβs what it is. They enforce YYYY-MM-DD on all documents.
YYYYMMDD is commonly used throughout East Asia.
Am American and I hate the MM/DD/YY(YY) format. Unfortunately its what's been taught and used as the standard date format for a long time.
I much prefer the ISO standard of YYYY-MM-DD. It's the superior format logically moving from the largest calendar unit to the smallest. Also superior for date ordering files.
Yeah, I resently saw it and I agree with you.
It's two less syllables to say "April Fourth" than "The Fourth of April".
That's about the only advantage it has.
Edit:
I was thinking about this grammatically. English is an Adjective first language where the modifying adjective goes before the base noun.
In my example, April is the adjective. It tells the reader what kind of Fourth it is.
It's at least a kind of logic.
Understandable.
FYI, I added more in the base comment.
MORE understandable, Thanks.
Because the day doesn't matter when you work every day between your three jobs that won't give you 40 hours in order to not give you health insurance.
That escalated quickly...
I can't say it matters to me that much what order it's in, but that's just the same order we say it in when fully written out. March 23, 2025. 03/23/2025.
Maybe it's a language specific thing? In my native tongue March 23 sounds like a journal entry, not a normal date.
Not an American. But I've heard the same explanation. And it does make sense to me.
However, why do Americans say "Fourth of July" then?
Because its a holiday
ITT: defensive answers and ISO-8601 supporters.
Yes, I didn't quite calculate how controversial the topic would be, my bad...
I think the clear answer is that there is no real reason other than habit and sunk cost fallacy.
See also the metric system, A4 paper, and daylight-saving time.
I'm not Mexican, but this reminds me of a Mexican ranchera that says "No cabe duda que es verdad que la costumbre es mΓ‘s fuerte que el amor" (There is no doubt that it is true that habit is stronger than love).
Most significant digits first. You write the thousands place before the hundreds, you write the month before the day. Of course, the whole argument is blow away when you write the year at the end instead of the beginning. (ISO YYYY-MM-DD dates for the win.)
Probably because in english it's the way they speak about dates (and the fact US kinda isolated themselves before WWII).
They started to write dates as they speak dates.
Why do Americans use MM/DD/YY for date, but not mm:ss:hh for time? Doesnβt that make the same amount of sense?
I don't know! that's why I'm asking!
It's not just Americans. There are many countries in Asia where the default is year month day. If you ever had to organize files by name and date this is the supreme sorting order. Both Europe and North America are getting it wrong.
If this gets you mad don't ever look into how the French count from 80 to 99. Or how languages disagree on what's blue or green. These things happen.
It comes down to the variable weather in the US versus the UK.
The UK has maybe handful of weeks of actual hot weather, months and months of rain, and then some weeks of bitter cold. The day is more important than the month who cares if itβs March or September? Itβs another day of rain and grey.
The US has extreme weather changes across the year, especially in the northeast where differences in US and UK English first began to diverge, intentionally and unintentionally. In a state like Massachusetts, knowing the month is important for things like setting the scene in letters βhomeβ and so forth. The summer months and grossly hot. The fall/autumn is full of brilliant colors and mild weather followed by months of bitter, unrelenting cold winter. The spring months yield to green and mild weather again. Knowing that the month is April is very important because the 4th of April is going to be incredibly different from the 4th of September.
Source: Link
Generally we say June 1, not 1 June or 1st of June... So 6/1 makes complete sense.
For anything "official", like a work spreadsheet, I'll use ISO format YYYY-MM-DD for clarity and ease of filtering/sorting.
Year is the most significant (read: big) unit in the list, but it is the least significant (pertinent to daily life) unless you're a time traveler. Of month and day, month is more significant than day in both size and pertinence, so it gets ordered first. But when sorting things into folders or file naming conventions, biggest category descending down to smaller categories is always the best.
Idk, maybe like all U.Sians traditions, this was an Old-World British thing Americans preserved, since it's a more direct term of the English language, more direct than Day then Month
so unless it's a special day, if not holiday, for U.Sians like 4th of July, by default, Month then Day
My guess is the month is most relevant to an agrarian society. It tells you where you are in the growing cycle that the entire culture revolves around. The day and year offer little practical utility to a 19th century farmer.
Oh, that make more sense and seems plausible! Thanks!
I don't have a clue why we do MM-DD-YYYY and personally I hate how dates are done in the west, to a degree.
For a maths course I've been taking at college, I never use MM-DD in my notebook because that and DD-MM are stupid in my opinion. I always spell out the month first to ensure I don't get mixed up. I honestly envy that some languages like Chinese and Japanese have an individual character to help distinguish between month and day.
Also, I would love if every country using the MM-DD or vice versa format could all agree on which format to use for everyday things.
Because Star Wars day sounds better when you say βMay the Fourth be with youβ. That said, I could be convinced to switch to Yoda-style βWith you, the Fourth May beβ.