Talk:List of date formats by country

Kenya?

The map shows Kenya as "DMY, YMD" but the chart shows Kenya as "DMY, MDY, YMD." Which is correct? Kamusisto (talk) 07:10, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Untitled

There is at least one mistake in the section with map. Table says that both YMD and DMY systems (green) are used by 10 mln people. At the same time on the map Poland is marked green (not sure if this is correct BTW - I mean people have no problem understanding YMD but they almost exclusively use DMY; also the next table says that Poland is DMY-only, so there's inconsistency) and population of Poland alone is 38 mln. Also I added all values in the table and I got 5170 mln. Are the unmarked territories (mostly in Africa) really account for the remaining ~1730 mln? (edit: just checked in the Demographics of Africa article - the whole Africa population is estimated at 1 billion) Sadi (talk) 18:26, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I also came across this article recently and find the numbers full of mistakes. I guess the only thing we can do now is just fix the numbers as best as we can, however crudely! Shreevatsa (talk) 19:45, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

What are the separators used in specific countries? For some countries this information is given in the details column of the listing. But for many countries, that column is empty. Are any of the separators and formats acceptable in these countries? Surely most of the people who live there will have particular preferences? Shouldn't we try to add inforamtion on seperators and formats for all countries in the listing? Otherwise, could someone add a note that states what separators and formats to use where none are given?

To all: Thank you for your suggestions. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the edit this page link at the top. The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). Guy Macon (talk) 17:41, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Poland and EU vs DMY + YMD

Both DMY and YMD are being used, the first one is still common in written language, however the latter one is getting more and more popular, especially for computer generated papers and younger people. Both formats are fully acceptable and readable. The following page proves that the YMD is accepted and even suggested format: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_and_time_notation_in_Poland

So, I would opt to update a map and table to state that Poland has 2 formats. I would even say that whole European Union should be marked this way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.155.115.46 (talk) 12:30, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

• I also noticed the misstake and updated the table, and will try to update the map.78.0.177.80 (talk) 13:17, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Map mistakes

Thailand should be colored cyan —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.85.113.117 (talk • contribs) 16:43, 26 March 2011

As of January 10, 2012, Sweden is not correctly colored in the map and is not colored according to the table below. As I don't have a SVG editor I cannot correct it. TobiasPersson (talk) 12:26, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Switched Sweden back to green, and the tool thats needed is a texteditor --Puggan (talk) 15:49, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Talking about Sweden, I do think that most people uses ISO 1802 format "yyyy-mm-dd" in written papers, as the social security number "personnummer" uses the form "yyyymmdd-rrrc", where rrr is random and c is check sum digit. But when spoken causually I think the most common forms are "d mmmm yyyy" or "d mmmm". In causally written form you can find the older forms "d/m yyyy" or "d/m -yy". But I do think that the old formats are getting more rare and more people uses "yyyy-mm-dd". Andjack (talk) 23:50, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

As a Swede myself - I, along with people I know, uses D/MMMM-YYYY. I think it's due to the fact that the current date is more important than the current year - plus that computers and phones writes DD MM YYYY. 83.183.68.183 (talk) 18:15, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Portugal is coloured incorrectly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.158.90.2 (talk) 10:31, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

You have the information for Belize wrong. Belize has the Day/Month/Year format, not the USA style Month/Day/Year format as you've outlined on this page. It would be great if you could correct it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.197.113.52 (talk) 11 December 2013

Croatia is DMY-only, please change the colour on map from green to cyan. Merkhet (talk) 09:28, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

I see no map! I see the table, but is there supposed to be an actual map? G6JPG (talk) 08:03, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Kraibekovc (talk) 06:42, 11 July 2015 (UTC) Kazakhstan use two order styles (the relevant governmental Rule http://adilet.zan.kz/rus/docs/P1100001570/compare (section 25): when you are writing in Kazakh the order is YDM. when you are writing in Russian the order is DMY. so, Kazakhstan should be different coloured.

The map does not reflect the graph, at least for Malaysia, I did not look at other countries, but it seems the whole thing needs to be changed by this page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.189.132.221 (talk) 19:42, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

Portugal is ISO 8601 compliant, and therefore should not have that colour on the map. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.225.92.202 (talk) 15:23, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Europe should be cyan throughout, maybe with UK (and Ireland?) as the exceptions. No sane person here uses the big endian form, unless forced to do so by some burocrat in Brussels or the national capital. Jj2006 (User talk:Jj2006|talk) 6 April 2021

Latvia and Parenthesis

Why are there two entries for Latvia? Why is every entry in the "Details" column bracketed? The frequent reference links right before closing parenthesis looks really bad. --Kitsunegami (talk) 04:27, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

The whole "green" section of the map needs to be checked e.g. Denamrk, Norway should be green (or alternatively the table should be fixed). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.134.170.35 (talk) 16:27, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Table is a complete mess

Speaking of this version: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Date_format_by_country&oldid=482145563

I think we can get rid of B, L, M concept and just stick with writing YMD, DMY, MDY. I think it's clearer and less redundant if we got rid of the endian notations. — JBrown23 — signature lost due to consecutive changes

I second this. It is really confusing to use both notations. I also think the definition should be based on official date format standards instead of having different colors for countries with differences between official and actual usage. -- Osram (talk) 20:32, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Why is "JIS X 0301-2002" listed under "ISO 8601" column? Sounds like this column should be renamed to "Standards", but some of the cells say "some use", which won't mean the same without the "ISO 8601" column title. This column is a mess.

Why do we have a references column with only four cells? Can't we just get rid of this column? It looks like all other rows add references in the "Details" column. --JBrown23 (talk) 01:12, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Endianness is not even an appropriate convention to describe these date formats. It's a force-fit, at best, and therefore seems like a case of "trying to sound smart". 72.209.211.71 (talk) 19:58, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

I have removed the endianness column as it serves no purpose in the context of date formats. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 14:27, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Most of the problems discussed above appear at a quick glance to have been resolved in the current list, however it is still a mess! The format columns use DMY to indicate order, but that doesn't work as the order may vary depending on the format - for example the British short format 10/03/2017 has day/month/year but in the long form, although 10th March 2017 is possibly more common, I have also seen March 10th 2017. Data storage systems are something else too. I don't think those columns are helpful unless they state which form is referred to. The first paragraph which starts "Basic components..." might then be redundant.

The 2nd paragraph which starts "Order of the basic components" uses computer terminology which I believe is normally only used to express the order in which bytes are stored, I do not understand how this can helpfully be used to describe dates.

I'm sorry to say that after reading this article I came away more confused than I started! If noone else wants to sort it out, I will try to. Chris.Bristol (talk) 07:36, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

United Kingdom

Can anyone provide a source for the UK information on this page? The cited reference link is broken, and the information given here conflicts with the Oxford Style Manual (page 179) which states that the UK format is '2.11.93', using dots rather than slashes. Somnolentsurfer (talk) 18:17, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Regarding dots v. slashes, I was taught slashes; and the comment above is the first that I've seen to indicate that it should be otherwise. The text gives the impression that MM/DD/YYYY (numeric) may be used, but I've never seen that (in purely British context) – where month precedes day number, it's always named. Personally, I'm pushing for YYYY-MM-DD everywhere. Dsalt (talk) 22:16, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Having lived in the UK for > 3 years, I see no evidence for YYYY-MM-DD being in common use. I suggest changing the table to "rarely". --46.33.141.90 (talk) 00:10, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Having lived in the UK for 54 of my (so far) 54 years, I can attest to having never seen YYYY-MM-DD in the UK.

Nuttyskin (talk) 00:20, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

For the average person, you are correct (same for me in Australia). However, many countries are adopting yyyy-mm-dd for government forms and documents. See https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-standards-for-government/date-times-and-time-stamps-standard  Stepho  talk  00:37, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Is it okay to edit this?

In Malaysian English, I think DMY and MDY both used, but DMY is mostly used.

But is it a vandalism if I edit this?

In Malaysian English, however, the American-style MDY is also sometimes used, example includes New Straits Times, The Sun and The Edge. The Malay Mail originally uses MDY before it changed to DMY due to the change of ownership.

I am a reader of NST, and the date that was notified was in MDY rather than DMY. And the link given from years ago is so a dead link. --MrFawwaz (talk) 08:50, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Did anyone get back to you about this? It's been a while since you posted your comment - are you still interested in improving this message? It needs it so much. Mag Wildwood (talk) 04:16, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

PS. I wrote 'mess' not 'message' but, as usual, the auto-correcter robot thinks it knows better than a human what was in my mind! Sadly, we're heading towards this being a reality. Obviously, I wrote 'mess' echoing another person's comment because it's a good word for describing this page. Anyone prepared to re-write and do a much better job at showing/listing the differences by country, gets a big thumbs up from me. Mag Wildwood (talk) 04:24, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Exceptional (eg MDY or YMD) formats, eg. Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia: "(dd/mm/yyyy in Islamic and Gregorian calendar systems,[128][129] except for major companies, which conventionally use the American mm/dd/yyyy format[citation needed])". Only DMY is listed in table but both in map. I think the map should in all cases agree with the listing. However meaning what the columns say. That is here DMY only (if really true). Listing what (multinational?) companies do I would think would be an ok addition if widespread but shouldn't change the columns? Similarly if the US military uses YMD, say that but not in the column and in map. What ordinary people (ethnic groups?) should matter. comp.arch (talk) 13:17, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Right date format in Wikipedia for YMD countries (eg. Japan, China)

I refer to this page for the right date format, but YMD is usually frowned upon in Wikipedia. Please see question and answer under Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers/Archive 145#"Right" date format in Wikipedia for YMD format countries (eg. Japan, China) comp.arch (talk) 12:21, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

This page tells us what format people in a country use when in that country. Which can be quite different to what English speaking people from other countries use when talking about that country. When using English, we need to use a date format understood by English readers.  Stepho  talk  22:27, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Source for formats, and the issue of language vs. country

One place the industrious editor might look for date format information is the National Language Support (NLS) API Reference at [1] (you may have to sign on to read the page). The Department of Commerce provides information for doing business in various countries, and I have found some date formatting information there. An index of these guides appears at [2]

There are many dead links used as sources for this article and without them there is no context, and without context there is confusion. The general concern I have is that the article doesn't say what it's about. When one says that a date format is used in a country, are they saying that its an official usage by law, or common usage, regional usage or what? Is it a commerce page, or a computer software development reference? The Microsoft reference page is organized by language, and not country, and perhaps that makes more sense. Dr. Conspiracy (talk) 17:56, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Date format to use in the Wikipedia

Take a look at this edit to the article: [3] one of the things done in this edit is to replace the access date of "1 April 2014" with "2014-04-01" and a descriptive comment "Oh, the irony of getting the reference date format wrong in a date format article."

I ask the reader to look around this page, at the dates that the Wikipedia automatically inserts, for example, in this signature here Dr. Conspiracy (talk) 16:14, 2 April 2014 (UTC) and you will see it as 2 April 2014 NOT 2014-04-02.

So is there some Wikipedia rule for formatting accessdate that I am not aware of, or was the edit mentioned above spurious?

The rule is at WP:DATEFORMAT. yyyy-mm-dd is allowed in references. Also, out of 178 references, 177 of them used yyyy-mm-dd dates and only yours used dd mmm yyyy. Inconsistency within an article looks very unprofessional.  Stepho  talk  13:58, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Danish standard

I am not able to find an official Danish standard without paying 500 DKK (not gonna happen). However I see in this article mention of dd-mm-(yy)yy as the traditional format while another article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_and_time_notation_in_Denmark) claims that "the official (and traditionally used) standard is D.MM.YYYY (e.g., 24.12.2006 for Christmas Eve, or 1.05.2006 for Labour Day)." Which is it? Dashes (-) or dots (.)? Signed 9 April 2014 192.71.76.2 (talk · contribs)

That article only gives http://dsn.dk/sproghjaelp/ofte-stillede-spoergsmaal/datoer/ as a reference and that requires an account and password to access it. WP:Denmark has nothing to say about it either. So all we can do is tag it with {{cn}} and maybe ask at WP:Denmark.  Stepho  talk  05:27, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

The official rules of writing are given by Dansk Sprognævn (DSN). Their rules for writing days are give in the mentioned article (moved to: http://sproget.dk/raad-og-regler/artikler-mv/svarbase/SV00000046 ):

Day-month-year

• d. mmmm (yy)yy, i.e. 3. januar 2003 or 3. januar 03
• d. mmm. (yy)yy, i.e. 3. jan. 2003 or 3. jan. 03 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Benadikt (talk • contribs) 10:44, 28 May 2017 (UTC)
• d.m.(yy)yy, i.e. 3.1.2003 or 3.1.03
• d/m (yy)yy, i.e. 3/1 2003 or 3/1 03
• d/m-yy, i.e. 3/1-03

Year-month-day

According to ISO 8601 (and Dansk Standard DS/ISO 8601:2005); but, unfortunately, DSN also accept two-digit years.

• (yy)yy-mm-dd, i.e. 2003-01-03
• yyyymmdd, i.e. 20030103

Note that the format dd-mm-yyyy that is used in enwikis article is NOT official in Denmark! Benadikt (talk) 10:37, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

Numbers in brackets

What does "China (1360) or "Hungary (10)" mean? --79.68.233.76 (talk) 12:01, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Populations in millions, apparently. Though it's not very clear, and looks to be verging on original research, unless the same aggregations have been done by a reliable source. W. P. Uzer (talk) 12:13, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, according to the legend of the table, millions in population. Of course, this is a moving target, so these figures need to be checked and synchronized against those found in the articles about the various countries regularly (ideally, we should copy references found there into here as well). --Matthiaspaul (talk) 16:41, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

What qualifies as multiple formats to a country?

As someone with a technical background I've been trying to support the ISO 8601 (YMD) standard in the United States for almost a decade now. I use it on checks, legal documents, bills, the IRS, virtually every document that was involved in purchasing my home, etc...except in rare instances where the document itself enforced an MDY standard. Never once has it caused me grief. While not all that mainstream it's definitely legally and culturally recognized. Sarysa (talk) 13:56, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

It depends on what is legally binding, what is culturally preferred and what people will over look. I suspect that for most of the cheques and forms the people at the other end simply didn't care enough to make an issue of it - as long as they could decipher it. I know that here in Australia the government official uses 12-07-2014 (short) and 12 July 2014 (long) but plenty of newspapers, personal websites, etc still use the traditional form of July 12, 2014 (as used by the British a century ago and still used by the Americans today). I used to live in Hong Kong where they used the Chinese system of 2014-07-12 (Chinese documents), the modern British system of 12/07/2014 (government English documents and some commercial usage) and the US system of 7/12/2014 (some commercial usage). Very confusing.  Stepho  talk  02:31, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

Month abbreviation

There is no mention of the two letter abbreviations for months, sometimes one letter when that can be done unambiguously. I have seen it used that way in library indexing. To be strictly unambiguous "JE" is used there for June. I have also seen something similar in expiry dates for perishable products. There, the use of "MA" for May and "JU" for June remains ambiguous. Eclecticology (talk) 11:39, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Pakistan

There is a error in the table or map regarding date format used in Pakistani. They don't match

Errors in map

1. Nepal should be green in color in the map. It's yellow.
2. India should be gray in color in the map. It's cyan. (also I think all of the countries in the table which are in the dark gray box are wrongly colored or labeled. for instance Sweden and South Africa. This map and the table associated with it needs serious correction.

Singapore and Japan

I've been using references from Singapore and Japan lately, and they're predominantly using MDY, but in the table it says they don't use it. Can anybody take a look? –HTD 07:22, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Most English media (movies, TV, magazines) tend to come from the US and people in Asian countries tend to just copy what they see in the English materials they see. Also, Windows and MAC-OS programs typically default to the US format, even when the operating system is set up to use something different. Most people just give in (usually without a fight) and use whatever format the software throws at them. Singapore traditionally uses either yyyy-mm-dd (Chinese heritage) or dd-mm-yyyy (British heritage) but since Britain also used mm-dd-yyyy in ye-olde-days, that also gets some use. Japan uses yyyy-mm-dd (Gregorian years) or yy-mm-dd (years since coronation of current emperor) but also tends to copy both US and British habits. Imagine the fun I had sorting out Y2K for EFTPOS software in the Asian region :(  Stepho  talk  09:00, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm referring to things such as newspapers. I'll perhaps add informal usage such as websites and announcements. MDY seems to be more common than the table says it is. Even newspapers may use the DMY in mastheads, but use MDY in actual article prose. I've even saw Japanese twitter users use "MM-DD". –HTD 09:58, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Norway

I updated the line for Norway, and that included not only updated sources, but also a factual change in that ISO dates are allowed for "technical" purposes (data exchange, lists to be sorted etc.) I am not sure if the latter has a wide enough scope to justify a "yes" in the YMD box, so that change could be up to discussion. (2016-02-10)

There are also two uexplained date elements ("b." and "p.") in the Norway and Finland entries. Hoewever they are in italic, does that mean that they are to be written literally? Or what do they represent? --FBitterlich (talk) 14:21, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Australia

All of the references for Australia supporting MDY are either dead or show the opposite. As an Australian, I can assure you that Australia does not support MDY in any way, shape, or form. YMD is not too bad, even has some advantages over DMY, and would be understood here. I do not have the skills to correct this. Regards Tim (16/02/2016) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.12.194.242 (talk) 23:00, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree wholeheartedly and made that change, but someone has just reverted it. As a result this page still misleads people into thinking that MDY might be generally accepted in Australia making "3/4/16" a valid encoding for the 4th of March, which would never be the case; Australians would always read that as the 3rd of April. The thesis of the reverter is that some newspapers write "March 4, 2016" in their mastheads and this makes MDY a generally accepted format, a claim that is an overreach and misleads the reader. The truth is that mmmmDY and mmmDY occur, but never numeric MDY. I have made another change that will, hopefully, satisfy all constraints. Inopinatus (talk) 23:38, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

I have removed the bit about 9/11. A moment's research revealed that the use of "9/11" as a US cultural import is a global phenomenon (e.g. I found it in Belgian and Russian news articles) and not limited to Australia. I'm asserting that it is not an illustration of a date format rule, but rather the globally accepted name of an exceptional event that is simply showing its US origins. Inopinatus (talk) 23:42, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm probably the 'someone' you are referring to. Your phrase "MDY is never used in Australia" covers both "3/4/16" and "March 4, 2016" style dates. As both of us have said, newspaper mast heads routinely use "March 4, 2016". Nearly all movie trailers in Australia also use the dreaded "March 4, 2016" style. Obviously your blanket statement doesn't hold true. However, your revised statement "The numeric MDY is never used in Australia" is quite true. I would amend it slightly to say "The all numeric MDY is never used in Australia' (adding the word "all") but otherwise I have no problem with it. As an aside, I did some work on EFTPOS terminals for American Express in Hong Kong. They insisted on using "3/4/16" to mean "March 4, 2016", even though the two common local numeric formats were D-M-YYYY (English) and YYYY-M-D (Chinese). Thankfully Australians reject "3/4/2016" as a date in March.  Stepho  talk  01:27, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

On the map, it's colored gray (as for Canada) for DMY/MDY/YMD, but in the table it's shown as DMY which ought to be cyan. One or t'other is wrong. Sethdecastro1 (talk) 13:26, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

Currently, it's coloured green (DMY, YMD) on the map and listed under cyan (DMY) everywhere else. 49.3.12.58 (talk) 11:50, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

I came here to query that very discrepancy. Shouldn't Australia be coloured cyan? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 01:00, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Spot on, Jack -- see under "Could somebody change Australia from green to cyan?" below. Stepho has the expertise, and will hopefully come back soon.  :-) Cheers, SCHolar44 (talk) 01:16, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 01:27, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Readability of month placeholders

Hello. I think we should revise the legends representing named months. Repeating the <m> glyph 3x to represent {Jan, Feb, Mar ...} or 5x to represent {January, February, March ...} is unsightly and possibly misleading-- <m> and <mm> are numerical values, unlike <mmm> and <mmmmm>. I suggest we use {<Mon>, <MON>} to represent an abbreviated month in different letter cases and <Month> to represent the full written name of the month. 74.70.110.148 (talk) 17:49, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

<m>, <mm>, <mmm> and <mmmmm> with the definitions you just mentioned has been the standard terminology within the computer industry for decades. It also matches the size of the resultant text quite well (single digit, 2 digit, 3 letters, many letters).  Stepho  talk  23:13, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

Belize

On the map, it's coloured red (as for Saudi Arabia and the Philippines) for DMY/MDY, but in the table it's shown as DMY which ought to be cyan. One or t'other is wrong. Peridon (talk) 10:35, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Order or format

I think the second column should have the headline Order or Succession in stead of format. The formats are explained in the third column. Benadikt (talk) 10:49, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

Israel

On the map, it's colored magenta (as for American Samoa, Guam, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Northern Mariana Islands, the United States, the United States Minor Outlying Islands and the United States Virgin Islands) for MDY, but in the table it's shown as DMY/MDY which ought to be red. Sethdecastro1 (talk) 01:09, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Please stop changing in table below of Israel to M/D/YYYY. The Hebrew format is DD/MM/YYYY and English format M/D/YYYY although DD/MM/YYYY also used, albeit rarely and more for English language. Sethdecastro1 (talk) 08:17, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Colour Blind

Coloured charts are a real nuisance to the 5% of the male population that is colour-blind, like me. Very few women are colour-blind. Cross-hatching works even in monochrome.

Sebmelmoth (talk) 16:15, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Map

SVG version

Hi Typhoon2013 and Sethdecastro1,

The map seems quite similar to File:Date_format_by_country NEW.svg. Is there a reason you made a PNG version instead of editing the SVG version which is easier to maintain. It seems that there are now two files which makes it difficult to keep them in sync with other articles. Is it OK to use the SVG version instead?

The colours also start out logical e.g. cyan + yellow = green, but cyan + magenta != red i.e. red and blue are swapped. Moreover, it's not really colour-blind-friendly. Would it be better to use hatching with more consistent colour addition?

Thanks,
cmɢʟee⎆τaʟκ 19:32, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

the lowercase m for the month setting

Well in some places, they use uppercase M for the month setting, the lowercase m is used for the minute setting

What the computer uses

d, dd = day
ddd, dddd = day of the week
M = month
m = minute
H = 24-hour clock
h = 12-hour clock
s = second
t = AM/PM
y = year

well when I type the lowercase m for the month setting, it automatically uppercases it, since minutes are part of time, and months are part of the date — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:A000:1103:35D:3128:DF22:DB0:AE96 (talk) 21:50, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

This article only deals with dates, not times, so minutes do not have to be taken into consideration. Either 'm' or 'M' is fine. Having said that, converting the article completely to 'M' would be okay by me.  Stepho  talk  22:59, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Australia 2

http://frontpages.fairfaxsyndication.com/archive/-2TWPN4JO2ZN.html

In regards to the previous user who remarked "used on newspaper mastheads".

The date listed on that newspaper masthead is January 1, 2000. But the source of the newspaper states 1 January, 2000.

Hence the use can only be described as erroneous and hence MDY is NEVER used in Australia

2001:8003:2BE3:D100:9C87:51B0:8091:474C (talk) 12:49, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

So you agree that the date used on the printed masthead is actually "January 1, 2000". If we look at today's date (31 May 2018) at http://frontpages.fairfaxsyndication.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=2ITP1GY12P472&SMLS=1&RW=1920&RH=1006 then we see 4 examples of the printed newspapers - each with a tiny "May 31, 2018" in the masthead (except the Financial Review, which has "31 May 2018"). Choose any date in their archive and you will see the same thing. It's not erroneous - they have chosen to use "May 31, 2018" in the printed form and "31 May 2018" in the web form. The majority of Australian newspapers also use the "January 1, 2000" format in their printed forms. Here are more examples: http://enewspaper2.smedia.com.au/wandemo/ , https://www.domain.com.au/news/in-pictures-how-8-melbourne-suburbs-have-gone-from-industrial-to-residential-20180529-h10i6b/?utm_campaign=featured-masthead&utm_source=the-age&utm_medium=link Obviously, "rare" is closer to the truth than "NEVER".  Stepho  talk  21:39, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

MDY (as in May 31, 2018) is commonplace in Australian newspapers and has been for many years. I think this stems from American sources overtaking British and European in syndicated content and subeditors grew weary of changing most dates into the preferred local format. Sub-editors are increasingly rare in modern journalism.

MDY (as in "5/31/2018") is NEVER used in Australian media. A date written as 1/6/18 is 1 June 2018, NOT January 6, 2018.

Hope this clears the mud a little. --Pete (talk) 21:54, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Still a little muddy. The column title is "MDY". I've taken that to represent both 12/31/2018 and December 31, 2018 formats. Agreed that the all numeric format is never used. But the spelt out format is used on most printed newspapers. My suspicion is that it is a hangover from British newspapers from a couple of centuries ago - before Britain switched formats. Movie adverts also use the December 31, 2018 format but that's more likely (similar to your theory) because they just copied the American advert verbatim.  Stepho  talk  22:12, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Until about ten years back, all Australian media used DMY exclusively. There was some public discussion at the time of the switch, but you know, newspapers are ultimately masters of what they do and how they do it. --Pete (talk) 22:27, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Please note in the table it says “numerical format” under the headings, hence “no” is correct 2001:8003:2BE3:D100:D53:490C:C38E:7169 (talk) 06:21, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Hmm, I missed that "numerical" part of the column header. I accept that Australians never use 31/12/2018 in our dates (even though newspapers use the spelt out form December 31, 2018), so I'll accept "no" in that column.  Stepho  talk  19:27, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

I'm sorry? "31/12/2018" is the official format, used by everyone. "12/31/2018" is used by nobody. --Pete (talk) 15:00, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Not sure what your point is. Nobody claimed that Australians use "12/31/2018". My claim was that newspaper mastheads usually use the spelt out form "December 31, 2018". But since it was pointed out that the column header said "numeric", I withdrew my claim as not relevant for that column. I'm content to leave it as just a mention in the details column.  Stepho  talk  21:29, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Does this page report official recommendations or everyday practices?

The table and map are inconsistent as to whether they report the country's official date format or what can be found in everyday use. Several countries that have their own versions of the ISO 8601 standard list 'No' under the relevant column. The only date format officially recommended in Canada is ISO 8601, but the other two formats also appear, hence it's coloured grey – but, according to the table, that's also the case in China, Ghana, India, Norway, South Africa, and Sweden, which are cyan, presumably because those practices are imports from elsewhere and officially discouraged.

These practices are difficult to pin down, and for consistency I would suggest that the page should only be reporting official recomendations, where available. To help communicate this, I wonder whether the yellow 'Regional' label needs to be relabelled as 'unofficial' or something similar. AndrewNJ (talk) 13:07, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Belgium and date formats in general use

Usage map: Belgium is shown cyan DMY, but yyyy-mm-dd has seen a strong increase because of going more and more paperless, and is cited by [23]. Should it not show green DMY, YMD ?

Listing: dd.mm.yyyy is claimed to be the (all numerical) format in use, and yet:

• [21] 2016-11-07 www.belgium.be portal page which does not provide date format rules itself, but otherwise has a news section showing use of date format dd/mm/yyyy. 4 august 2018.
• [22] 2016-03-20 www.ibm.com localization page shows d/MM/yy. 4 august 2018.

Other possible references for d/MM/yy:

• http://www.localeplanet.com/java/nl-BE/index.html and http://www.localeplanet.com/java/fr-BE/index.html Java Locale (nl-BE) and (fr-BE). 2018-08-04.
• Indirect but verifiable reference: At least Microsoft Windows versions 3.11, 95, NT4.0, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 and 10 apply d/MM/yyyy for regional setting "Dutch (Belgium)".

[23] 2017-05-22 www.taaltelefoon.be which refers to a norm (NBN Z 01-002) and does cite dd.mm.yyyy, but in what way or shape does a norm specify "general use"? In this case I would submit it is not dissimilar from stating that the USA has the metric system in general use (which it clearly has not), just because it was officially adopted.

Date formats (all numerical) used in fiscal documents and web sites include at least: dd/mm/yyyy, dd-mm-yyyy, dd.mm.yyyy.

Kris M (talk) 16:01, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

Date separator punctuation

When using 4 digit year

"/" indicates MM/DD/YYYY
"-" indicates DD-MM-YYYY
"." indicates DD.MM.YYYY

When using 2 digit year

"/" indicates MM/DD/YY
"-" indicates YY-MM-DD
"." indicates DD.MM.YY

- 2600:1:9B8B:FA6E:3813:E596:CD24:92B1 12:40 am, 21 October 2018

Unfortunately, I have seen "/", "-" and "." used in all the date orders. Some combinations are more common in some countries but world-wide all combinations turn up.  Stepho  talk  04:41, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

Does it mean relations to Long and Short scales?

This?

• USA - MDY/Short Scale
• UK - DMY/Short Scale
• Europe - DMY/Long Scale
• PH - MDY & DMY/Short Scale
• Canada - All date formats/Short and Long Scale
• China, Japan and Korea - YMD/Different numeral system (Myriad)

124.106.130.227 (talk) 08:17, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Officially - no. However, MDY and the short scale are both championed by the US and taken up by countries with close relations to the US (eg Canada and The Phillipines).

Europe and her various colonies in the 19th century typically used the long scale (especially the British Empire). However, in the mid-20th century many countries changed to the short scale. So, just like how metric has gradually taken over most countries and DMY gradually replaced MDY in many countries, the short scale is likewise taking over. No fixed pattern, just a gradual changeover.  Stepho  talk  11:41, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Well, most non-English-speaking European countries retain long scale of numbers and majority of it retains DMY format throughout the 21st century and beyond. (like for example, 21 septembre 1972, 15 luglio 1944, 24 de Julho de 2015, 30. November 2015, 3.5 Mil Milhoes, 1000 Milliards, 1500 Milliarden, etc...) 124.106.130.227 (talk) 03:55, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 7 March 2019

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Not moved, consensus against original proposal, no prejudice against speedy renomination under a modified proposal per final !vote. (closed by non-admin page mover) SITH (talk) 22:58, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

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Date format by country → All-numeric date format by country – The article tracks numeric date formats specifically, with only a few exceptions in the table. (If it were tracking date formats generally, it would cease to make sense, as some countries might use YYYY-MM-DD as their sole official all-numeric date format but day month year for their full date.) Having this focus reflected in the title would make it much easier to understand what this article is trying to achieve. AndrewNJ (talk) 22:41, 7 March 2019 (UTC) --Relisting. SITH (talk) 13:20, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• Comment – Weak support, though I'd prefer "Numeric date format by country". I mis-parsed the meaning of the suggested title at first, even though it's hyphenated. I think it's reasonable to infer that "Numeric" means "All-numeric", but that may be the programmer in me. Also, technically, it's not all-numeric; there is punctuation in there too. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 00:37, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm suggesting "All-numeric" because most style guides seem to use that term (or "All-numeral dates", as the Chicago Manual of Style; or "all-figure forms", as New Hart's Rules). But I am also happy enough with "Numeric date format". AndrewNJ (talk) 01:15, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose. Date format by country is only of interest in the context of all numeric ones. Whether it is Mar 7, 2019 or 7 Mar 2019, there is no issue with understanding it. But 03/07/2019 could be either Mar 7 or 3 July, depending on what country you're in. That's why this article. There is no need to burden the title with this obvious clarification. --В²C ☎ 01:03, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

One would think – but in practice, you can see from the edit log that people periodically become confused and think this is supposed to be a summary of all forms of date notation. AndrewNJ (talk) 01:15, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose - There is no confusion with the title of this article - It does what it says on the tin, In some respects this is a solution looking for a problem. –Davey2010^Talk 12:58, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose - The long and short formats and the numeric format nearly always have the same order. Only a few special cases exist (eg Australian newspapers nearly always use 'March 3, 2019' in the masthead, even though practically everything else here uses '3 March 2019'). We could make it clearer though.  Stepho  talk  13:51, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

What would you suggest doing to make it clearer? There are many countries that have YYYY-MM-DD as an official date format, but few of them write the full date in that order. AndrewNJ (talk) 18:42, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

By clearer I mean for us to explicitly state that the table is for numeric formats and that differences in the text format will be mentioned in the details column (eg Australia's annoying use of mdy in newspaper mastheads and movie releases).

Can you give some examples of countries that write numeric and text forms in different order. To my knowledge, countries use the same order for both. Some countries do allow yyyy-mm-dd in technical stuff (mostly forms and identifiers like filenames) but still allow their traditional form in prose.  Stepho  talk  22:01, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

• Support moving to "Numeric date format by country" – I've opened this article multiples times coming from Google when trying to figure out other language's dates, including how ordinals are used (is it like the German "2. mai", which is preferred in English "May 2nd" / "2 May" / "2nd of May" / "2 of May", do the Spanish use ordinals at all and do "2° de mayo"), are months capitalized, which order do things go in. So at least this title has WP:SURPRISED me. – Þjarkur (talk) 17:56, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Map caption syncd with table

@AndrewNJ: I retrieved the populations for each of the countries/territories listed in the long table under List of date formats by country § Listing from List of countries and dependencies by population (and a handful of other articles for missing islands, etc.). The result is at User:AlanM1/Date format populations, which I then used to update the caption of the map containing some of the countries, regions, and totals. One thing I noticed, however, was that the color shown for DMY+MDY was red, even though it is supposed to be a CMYK-based mix, and DMY is cyan and MDY is magenta, which combined make blue, not red. I changed this in the key, but the map will need updating (there were a lot of other inconsistencies in it anyway). I notice that it is this way in the key at Commons as well. I didn't change it there yet, in case I'm wrong about this. I added keys to the caption for MDY+YMD (magenta+yellow=red) as well as MDY+YMD+DMY (magenta+yellow+cyan=black, though I used gray – #888 – instead) for the entries in the table that claim to use all three formats. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 17:48, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

@AndrewNJ:  Done: I sync'd the map caption and the map coloring with the table. Until someone edits the table —[AlanM1(talk)]— 23:40, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Map of long form dates

As I understand it, the map in the article shows the usage of short-form dates only. This is very useful. However, it would also be useful to have a map or otherwise easy overview of usage of the long-form date formats. I'm trying to get an impression of the usage of DD MMMM YYYY and MMMM DD, YYYY and such a map or table would be very useful. True, the long-form date is harder to misunderstand, but as a European I still quite frequently write the month-first long-form incorrectly because it's not logical at all to my brain (because we never use it (Norway)). Is this map something that would be possible to eventually include in the article? Pangaearocks (talk) 02:46, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Australian non-numeric formats.

Skyring and myself have a disagreement. For a long time in the table Australia has had some text in the details column specifying how mmmm d, yyyy is often used for newspaper masts, theatre release dates and similar media stuff. Skyring removed this with the summary "This listing is for numeric formats". I restored it with the summary "Revert good faith edit by Skyring. There are 3 numeric columns but the article in general and the details column support both numeric and text formats." Skyring deleted it again with the summary "This needs discussion. Your interpretation isn't widely held."

The table has 3 columns dedicated to the 3 common numeric forms but there is nothing that says the table can only contain numeric information. And the article as a whole has nothing that says we are only discussing numeric formats. If you look in the details column, many other countries mention mmmm (ie the full, non-numeric text form of the month). I'm not sure how he can say "Your interpretation isn't widely held" when so many other countries have mmmm in the details columns - it looks like a rather lot of people agree with me.

As per WP:BRD, I have restored those parts to their original form. After the discussion, we will make the article match the consensus.  Stepho  talk  09:10, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

U.S. Virgin Islands date format

On https://www.timeanddate.com/ shows the date format for the U.S. Virgin Islands in DMY (03-11-2024), whereas the United States uses MDY (11/03/2024).--2605:A000:1103:3E6:7097:9C7E:71EB:B423 (talk) 03:03, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Canada

@Stepho-wrs: I am pinging you because you are active in this area. You'd be better at editing the map. Even though MDY and DMY are more common in Canada (especially the former), according to the following [4], YMD is also acceptable in certain applications. That would make Canada grey for all three. Mr. C.C.^{Hey yo!}_{I didn't do it!} 20:02, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the status should be for Canada. But once others have decided then I can edit the map on a weekend.  Stepho  talk  21:45, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

On Canada, this statement is highly confusing: "For English speakers, MDY was preferred form (mmm-dd-yyyy) (Example: April 9, 2019) and used by nearly all English language publications and media companies as well as majority of English language government documents." My questions: (1) what is the meaning of "was"? Does it mean that it is no longer the preferred form? (2) As the only example given is of the date being written in full, does this mean that MDY is mainly used for writing the date in full rather than in all-numeric format? This is relevant because in the UK, MDY is occasionally found when writing the date in full, but is never used for all-numeric format. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.197.87.59 (talk) 10:16, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

As said above, I am by no means an expert on Canadian dates, but I will throw in my opinion. Newspaper masts, movie advertising and television seem to always use MDY in all English speaking countries - even when that country uses DMY for everything else. Newspaper masts seem to be a tradition thing from when the UK used MDY in centuries past - even when the contents of the newspaper use DMY. Movies and TV seem to be because so much of it comes from the US that the rest of the industry just goes along with it. And Canadian friends tell me "When you're in bed with an elephant - when it rolls, you roll!"

The "was" seems wrong to me. I would change it to "is".  Stepho  talk  21:35, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Stepho, could you now change the colour of Canada to grey, please? Beyond my ken, I'm afraid. – SCHolar44 🇦🇺 💬 at 12:42, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

All-numeric date format for Kazakh

There is no source on Kazakhstan using YDM format outside of the long format. It should be removed from that Wikipedia article unless a source is provided. YueLing01 (talk) 03:55, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

There was already provided a source: Rules of Documenting in Governmental Authorities (section 25) https://adilet.zan.kz/kaz/docs/P1100001570. The Rules say that not only long date is in the format YYYY DD MMMMMM (e.g. 1995 ж. 05 сәуір), but also a short format is also a YYYY.DD.MM (e.g. 1995.05.04) Kraibekovc (talk) 13:03, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Could somebody change Australia from green to cyan?

See last line of column 4 for cyan. Cheers, Simon – SCHolar44 🇦🇺 💬 at 06:05, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Stepho?  :-) And Canada, above? Cheers, Simon – SCHolar44 🇦🇺 💬 at 00:25, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

There's some conflict here. The map shows Australia as green (DMY+YMD), the map's legend shows Australia as cyan (DMY only) and the table shows Australia as DMY only. In daily use, we use DMY. For movie releases and newspaper masthead we use MDY. And the government has some standards that allow YMD that most of us just ignore (mostly for databases and other computer related stuff). Not sure which way to go.  Stepho  talk  00:00, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

I agree, Stepho. The MDY practice on mastheads (and sometimes in newspaper articles) seems to have been widespread in the 19th centrury -- in fact I've just seen that the Sydney Gazette of 1803 and the Australian of 1824, 1st and 2nd newspapers in Australia, used that format. It's not going to change but it is an idiosyncrasy. Movie releases may be influenced by US origins and/or the predominance of US distributors; maybe not. Anyway, I completely agree with your summary.

Since -- what, 99.99999...%? -- of Australian text output is DMY, I think these two tiny exceptions don't warrant a green (DMY+MDY) colour, and I would recommend cyan in the map and placement in the cyan group in the table are appropriate. My 2 cents. Cheers, Simon – SCHolar44 🇦🇺 💬 at 05:01, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

Apologies to Stepho et al. I forgot to sign off with 4 tildes in order to ping. Cheers, Simon. SCHolar44 (talk) 01:19, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Europe : UN/CEFACT recommendation n°7 for the trade and business : YMD

In 1998, the UNECE published a recommendation based on the ISO 8601 : "Numerical representation of dates, time, and periods of time" (pdf). TRADE/WP.4/INF.108 Recommendation 7. --ENSEA92 (talk) 20:33, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

References

South African date standards

South Africa has adopted the ISO-8601 standard. The usage of the standard in different languages may vary but officially South Africa uses SANS 8601:2009 as a national standard. — Preceding unsigned comment added by PennyTraps (talk • contribs) 05:31, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

References

Source for the Kazakh date format.

The source given for the Kazakh date format is a 2011 government decree, which, however, was overturned in 2015 per the very page cited in the page. Is there proof that the YYYY.DD.MM format is still used in Kazakh? Is it possible that the government has switched over to a different date format? I couldn't find any related decrees on the site by searching for rules of documentation myself searching in Russian, however.--178.155.5.47 (talk) 12:27, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

References

YDM format (year-day-month) format

Is Year-Day-Month format rare?

2024 3 November [refresh] displays the format as YYYY DD Month

Who uses YDM format such as YYYY DD Month

Latvia, and Kazakastan I thought use YDM in some cases

Here are all of the six possible orders

YMD - 2024, 11 03 [refresh]
MDY - November 3, 2024 [refresh]
DMY - 03 11, 2024 [refresh]
YDM - 2024, 03 11 [refresh]
MYD - 11 2024, 03 [refresh]
DYM - 03, 2024 11 [refresh]

--2603:6011:E01:E465:D14:30A8:6C8A:79C7 (talk) 01:07, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

YDM is very rare. Until yesterday, I would have said there are no cases. I can't find a definitive answer for Latvia. https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2/11.1?topic=considerations-date-time-formats-by-territory-code says yyyy.dd.mm but other sites are mostly DMY. A few sites that I don't think are particularly authoritative say "YYYY. [gada] D. MMMM", see https://github.com/moment/moment/issues/655 . Their government website uses DMY, eg https://www.vid.gov.lv/lv/algas-nodokla-gramatina . Perhaps they used YDM traditionally but recently changed to DMY officially. But I don't know Latvia well enough, so a native speaker would know better than me.

Kazakstan is mentioned in the section above and I have nothing to add.  Stepho  talk  12:02, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

As clear as mud; remove and start again - PLEASE

This has got to be the worst attempt at explaining something that I have ever seen on Wikipedia, or anywhere else for that matter. What a confusing mess. The map is bad enough but the table is headache-inducing! Just appalling. How did this page ever get approved? Please get rid of the whole thing and start again. Mag Wildwood (talk) 04:14, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Feel free to start a draft article in your user space. If we like it then we can steal it from when you're looking the other way ;)  Stepho  talk  08:07, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

I completely agree with this. The map should be coloured based on primary usage in each country. I've lived in the U.K. and Germany, neither of which uses YMD widely at all; it would be very strange to see YMD there in any context other than computing. Why are they both green? It's misleading.

I strongly suggest changing the map and table to reflect actual usage. Aaronmg2 (talk) 19:41, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Living in Germany for a long time now, I just can't believe this discussion went nowhere and the YMD is still in for Germany. Misleading, wrong and unsourced! 47.69.66.56 (talk) 14:21, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Numerous Issues

This page requires a complete overhaul. In my view, the numerous issues include:

1. The actual daily use of countries is not reflected in the table/map. The data should reflect the way people use the language in each country generally. For example, the UK overwhelmingly uses DMY. The fact that in some computing contexts YMD is used is irrelevant for an overview such as this.
2. The ISO 8601 article seems to have encroached on this one. It already has an article, the information contained on it here is largely superfluous.
3. The "table coding" section is a mess:
   1. By whom is "endian" used in this context? I can find no reputable source for the use of the term "endianness" for dates. Apart from it being completely useless (DMY, YMD etc. is clearer and more concise), it looks like it was added in on the 6th April 2005 to the "Endianness" article as an example of the concept of endianness (without citation) and has somehow gained traction from this very site. Is that not essentially Original Research? Please correct me if this is incorrect.
   2. The "specific formats" part is, again, unsourced. It's also too detailed; no country uses one specific format for all contexts, that is the purview of style guides.
   3. The separators section merely gives the names of the punctuation marks. Relevant?

I could go on and on. How should this be fixed? I saw someone above recommending creating a draft article in their own user space. Should I do that? Please tell me what you think, I don't want to make massive edits without the agreement of others. Aaronmg2 (talk) 15:43, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Removing endianness

As JBrown23, Osram, Matthiaspaul and others have already proposed and agreed in section #Table is a complete mess” (originally “Proposal to get rid of endianness”), and then again in section “#Numerous Issues”, there is no need for adding the endianness. I see no argument for keeping it here on this page. Therefore, and since the way it is used is redundant to the information under “Order styles”, I am removing it now. ◅ Sebastian 14:57, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

The heart of this article is original research

Several users, above all Aaronmg2 in section #Numerous Issues already pointed out issues at the heart of this article that boil down to WP:OR. Above all, I see no reliable source for the most conspicuous part of the table, the three highlighted columns under “All-numeric date format”. Is there any? If not, what should we do? Apparently, nobody is up to the task of starting over, as suggested above. How about if we then reduced the article to just its current lede (which could be split up in sections) and only those parts of the table that we can actually source? ◅ Sebastian 15:21, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

On second glance, I see this more differentiated now: Often, the next column, ‘Details’, contains either a reference for the previous three, or some text that explains them. E.g. in the case of Germany, where I would have agreed with Aaronmg2 that the YMD is very unusual, it states that ‘yyyy-mm-dd’ has become the official standard. If one searches long enough, one reaches, if not the standard itself, at least a recommendation for this usage. (In such cases, instead of coloring the country in a mixed color, we might consider expressing the most common format as background color and the recommended standard as border color or as dots in the area.) I therefore would amend my above suggestion so that all rows where either a reference or such a reasonable explanation is provided in the ‘Details’ column would remain. ◅ Sebastian 16:17, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

== ITALY??

Italians use DMY exclusively. Of course, if forced by computer forms or the need to communicate in another language we can change to the foreign format when required, but this is not the Italian date format. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.252.184.172 (talk) 19:59, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

References

Change DMY for Sweden

Suggests that DMY be changed to "Sometimes" for Sweden. DMY is very unusual among the general public and is only used when required by EU legislation. However, DD/MM can be used but assume it does not count as DMY.

Source: https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/write-date-in-swedish Cenorida (talk) 20:37, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

@Cenorida: Thanks for bringing this up. I would recommend adding that source to the table. On a related note, do you have a source for Lithuania and Hungary sometimes using DMY? The currently included notes and sources only seem to mention YMD. Justin Kunimune (talk) 17:25, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree that Swedes use YMD in numeric form for most informal situations. However, fully spelt out DMY is used in formal contexts. You can see this at https://www.government.se/ .  Stepho  talk  23:13, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

I don’t have any sources, but in my experience, similarly to Sweden, DM(Y) is only used in Hungary when mandated by EU legislation, like “best before” dates on food. (I don’t know Lithuania, but since it’s also part of the EU, the same may be the case there.) —Tacsipacsi (talk) 08:32, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

Using YMD and MDY instead of YYYY-MM-DD and MM/DD/YYYY

To the IP editor, the reason this article uses the shorter notations of "YMD" and "MDY" instead of the longer notation of "YYYY-MM-DD" and "MM/DD/YYYY" is that different countries use different delimiters and different levels of abbreviation. The shorter notation only specifies the order of the three elements, so we only need to account for three options. If we were to use the longer notation, we would need to account for "YYYY-MM-DD", "YY-MM-DD", "YY mmm DD", "YYYY/MM/DD", "YYYY年MM月DD日", and dozens of other formats. If you still feel it's important to change to the longer notation, please explain why here before making the edit. Justin Kunimune (talk) 01:49, 11 July 2024 (UTC)