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04/04/04
2

04/04/04

04/04/04

(OP)
So April 4th is coming up, which made me think of the date: 04/04/04. Around here we have been struggling since 2001 with a way to ensure a consistent date strategy so that everyone knows when you are talking about. The solution could be to incorporate the date in its shortened form, but many of our antiquated programs only offer numbers for entering dates.

My question is, what, if any, is the most universal standard for dates: mm/dd/yy, dd/mm/yy, yy/mm/dd or something else?

RE: 04/04/04

My understanding is...North America mm/dd/yy, Europe yy/mm/dd

RE: 04/04/04

ChrisConley,

   I write out the month whenever I can, and I use a four digit year.  This is the only thing that is reliably clear.

   How many people out there are absolutely clear on American versus European date numbers, especially when you are from Canada, like I am?

   Consider the ISO date which goes YY/MM/DD.  This even sorts on your computer whne you use them in filenames.

                        JHG

RE: 04/04/04

In any international business, the obvous potential for misunderstandings due to the different ordering in the US from elsewhere is such that i always opt for a date form that uses APR or April and not 04. The means to avoid ambiguity is there.
If, however, you are suggesting this woudl be a good opportunity for us all to switch to the same convention....

JMW
www.viscoanalyser.com

RE: 04/04/04

If I remember correctly, while in the Navy, the dates were always written as 29MAR04.

Ray Reynolds
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

RE: 04/04/04

The parts of Europe and Asia that I have worked in mainly use DD/MM/YY. I have only found MM/DD/YY in common use in the US, although some parts of Scandinavia use YY/MM/DD

Good Luck
johnwm

RE: 04/04/04

Isn't ISO now YYYY/MM/DD?  The only way that always works is when you can use an alpha month, but you can't always use an alpha month.  Four digit years help, but not enough.  The Navy-way worked till the milleneum, but now it is 29MAR2004 and all the programs have seven characters hard coded and none of the old two-digit years sort properly.

David

RE: 04/04/04

As you can see, it varies. I am seeing more of the ISO way...but still varies between commercial, military & continents.

RE: 04/04/04

In Asia they use YYYY/MM/DD. Usually anything that can be measured is expressed from biggest value to smallest.

RE: 04/04/04

In that case, with 12 months and upto 31 days one would therefore expect yyyy/dd/mm. I think the base ten system also tries to work left to right highest to lowest? but dates?
As usual, we have every man and his dog inventing his own conventions and some not even abiding by their own conventions.
If Bill Gates wanted to he could end all this confusion by only giving us one date format option.

JMW
www.viscoanalyser.com

RE: 04/04/04

2
I still can't believe people haven't learnt anything from the whole Y2K fiasco.  There is NO REASON to not use alpha numeric months and 4 digit years, to avoid all confusion.

April 4, 2004
4 avril 2004
etc.

Any doubt what date I am referring to?

I refuse to use 03/02/05 for any of the 3 possible dates this denotes.  Why am I the only one?

The antiquated programs should be modified, or replaced.

tg

RE: 04/04/04

I have doubt..April or avril? just kidding
I agree, but a lot of people are hung up on certain date types. It is very hard to change. Gov't agencies need to step up and mandate a change..IMO.

RE: 04/04/04

Think again, jmw.

A month is still a bigger unit than a day is.

Using your logic would give us mm.ss.hh for minutes, seconds and hours. That would not be very practical.

The ISO way using yyyy-mm-dd is accepted in large parts of Europe. It is mathematically correct, non-ambiguous and makes calculation and sorting safe and easy.

RE: 04/04/04

Avoid the entire issue and use alpha months. Then it doesn’t matter which order you put the month and day. 13 Apr and Apr 13 are always interpreted the same way. If the year is included then it becomes 13 Apr 04 or Apr 13, 04. Still no confusion.

I worked for the Canadian military and they use a slight variation of the navy date system mentioned above. It’s not 13Apr04 but 13 Apr 04. (Spaces make it more readable)  

The difference between 1904 and 2004 can usually be determined by content. If it’s unclear then use 13 Apr 1904.

Rick Kitson MBA P.Eng

Construction Project Management
From conception to completion
www.kitsonengineering.com

RE: 04/04/04

ctopher:

Did you think avril was a typo. error? In case that's what you thought, avril is french for April.  Here in Canada, we have 2 official languages to complicate matters...

Agree with RDK...

Cheers

tg

RE: 04/04/04

Much of the resistance to alpha months comes from people using computers.  Micro$oft has helped us out by storing serialized dates that can be displayed any way you want, but when someone types in 02 Apr 2004 as text in a program, it will always sort before 01 Jan 2004.

There's easy solutions to this, but people will insist on keeping their "comfortable" formats.

David

RE: 04/04/04

You are correct, there are easy solutions.  My preference is to standardize on the format YYYYMMDD.

But it is interesting to note that the easy solution requires that we adopt a standard, and that we adhere to that standard.  Easier said than done.  Even within these discussions, there are those who are against any standardization as it is deemed to be an erosion of their freedom of speech.

RE: 04/04/04

Yep... and look how well we done adhering to the SI system.

TTFN

RE: 04/04/04

(OP)
What about if we came up with a new idea entirely, like the 24 hour clock, the 365 day year. Instead of March 31, 2004 we'd have 91/04. Simpler input for computers, no way to misinterpret the data... plus I could stop having to remember which months have 30 days and which ones have 31 days. (I always mix up that rhyme 30 days has November, April, June and November.... or something like that.)

RE: 04/04/04

I use the 24-hour clock daily and find it very easy. I also use the 365 day calendar (Julian Calendar) specifically for the development of project numbers. Project numbers developed using this method are significant, in that the risk of duplicate numbers is practically eliminated. The number is the Julian Date with a three-digit suffix for each project during the day. The next day the same suffix can be used again as the difference in the number will be the Julian date.

I have never used the Julian calendar for daily activities. It seems that it would complicate life considerably. I still use the 24-hour clock, and I usually have to explain myself when someone asks me for the time. I have become so accustomed to saying, i.e. it 1830 instead of 6:30pm that I forget to convert when speaking to folks who are not aware of 24-hour time.

Good Thread --- a standard worldwide would be nice but I don't see it coming in the near future.

Regards,

ietech



RE: 04/04/04

If you want to remember which months have 30 or 31 days, use your knuckles, with your close fisted hands next to each other.

Start with January at your leftmost knuckle and then Feb. is the next valley between knuckles, then the next knuckle (peak) is March etc.  

July and Aug. are on peaks as you go from one hand to the next.  It works...

tg

RE: 04/04/04

(OP)
That is about 100 times better than any other method I've every heard of for remembering the months. I'm going to teach that one to my kids.

Thanks, and a Star for trainguy

RE: 04/04/04

I learned the same method, but only on one hand.

Clench your left-hand, count your fore finger-knuckle as January, work down to the pinky-knuckle (1st valley between fore-finger and middle knuckle is Feb, next knuckle is March, etc), then count that twice (July... August (same number of days)) and work your way back to the fore finger-knuckle.

Ray Reynolds
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

RE: 04/04/04

Does anyone know the historical reason why we have 7 months with 31 days, 5 months with 30 days, and one month with 28/29 days?

I know that early astronomers / astrologers (there wasn't really a distinction back then) tried to tie the lunar month (of approximately 27.322 days) to the solar year (of about 365.26 days), even though they knew that there were not an exact number of days in a lunar month, nor an exact number of days or lunar months in a solar year.

However, if I was given the job of rationalising 365.26 days into 12 months, I would have come up with 7 months with 30 days and 5 with 31, and in a leap year you would have 6 of each.

Why do we have just one short month? (Os is that just too anally retentive of me?)

RE: 04/04/04

JulianHardy: Doesn't make much sense does it? I can tell you that in 46 BC, on advice from the astronomer Sosigenes, Julius Caesar divided the year into 12 months of 31 and 30 days, except for February which had 29 days, but 30 in every fourth year. So at that point, it did make some sort of sense, though not quite as much as your suggestion. Later on, however, Augustus, who had a month named after him so that he could keep up with Caesar who had appropriated July, wanted his month August to be as long as Caesar's July. At that point, August had only 30 days, versus July which had 31, so he stole a day from February, which ended up with 28. The Julian calendar lasted until 1582, when the modern Gregorian calendar was created by Pope Gregory - the Roman Catholic Church having assumed many of the old overarching functions of the Roman Empire. That's probably the time when they should have rationalized it.

RE: 04/04/04

I found the Swatch thing at last. Google for 'internet time' and 'beat'. The Swiss guys are planning a timely (yes, bad pun) revolution and have introduce the 'beat' as a time unit. There are 1000 beats to one day. The new Greenwich is Biel in Switzerland.

But they didn't go all the way. They still seem to have a problem with the dates.

RE: 04/04/04

Have the Swiss yet identified how they are going to address all of the mathematical formulae based on the second, such as the Speed of Light and Acceleration due to Gravity to name a few?

Can you image if we now have to re-learn all of the constants and formula because the basic unit of time has changed?

RE: 04/04/04

Easy now, Cajun!

I think it will take some time before the Swiss reach world dominance.  You can surely continue using fathoms per eye-blink (or what you are using for speed-of-light in the non-metric countries) for quite a while  

RE: 04/04/04

You mean like 299,792,458 m/s ?

RE: 04/04/04

Sorry. I thought you were in the US...

RE: 04/04/04

The basic unit of time (the second) is the same whether you're using metric or any other system for that matter.

299,792,458 m/s  or 186,000 mi/s.

Changing the basic unit of time to a base 10 interval, as appealing as it sounds, would have far reaching consequences, not all negative, but far reaching nonetheless.

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