I’m sorry but it doesn’t make sense TO ME. Based on what I was taught, regardless of the month, I think what matters first is to know what day of the month you are in, if at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of said month. After you know that, you can find out the month to know where you are in the year.
What is the benefit of doing it the other way around?
EDIT: To avoid misunderstandings:
- I am NOT making fun OF ANYONE.
- I am NOT negatively judging ANYTHING.
- I am totally open to being corrected and LEARN.
- This post is out of pure and honest CURIOSITY.
So PLEASE, don’t take it the wrong way.
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.)
Most significant digits first.
That would only make sense if the US wrote the year first, but they don’t. They just seem to slap the date together in a random order
I think that’s context relevant though. If we think about when dates are most frequently used (news, business, planning) it’s typically within the year (or month will give context).
That added with the fact it’s not uncommon in some situations to just provide month/day.
That being said, I don’t think either is better or worse. Just a preference kinda thing, unlike the issue between metric and imperial units.
little Endian entered the chat.
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.
You articulated what I was thinking, better than I could have. This is it for me.
I’d add that there’s probably a lot of habit involved, plus the fact that everyone else does it.
So not only am I not used to saying “today is the 4th of May”, everyone around me isn’t used to hearing it either and might think I’m being weird.
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…
American here. No idea. Either DD/MM/YYYY or YYYY/MM/DD are more logical, but here we are. When naming/renaming files and including a date in the name, I’ll usually do YYYYMMDD format somewhere. If I’m emailing/texting others, I use MM/DD/YYYY.
Fun little story, the department I work in recently began to work with some people over in the UK, and even though I brought up the date format differences, we’ve already had someone of gett the month and day flipped and it caused some confusion on our end.
I write the date a bit different depending on which format its going on.
For example, computers like to sort things alphabetically. If I’m writing electronic diary entries, I’ll name the document as “2025-06-01.”
If I’m hand signing a legal document, I prefer to sign it as “01JUN2025” or “01JUN25” if space is an issue.
If the format is preselected and deviation isn’t allowed, I’ll just write it like everyone else does.
Personally, I like dating things in ascending or descending order. Day month year, or year month day.
I’m a fan of the 01JUN2025 format. It’s unambiguous and uses about the same space as other traditional formats.
It’s how I was taught in the Navy to write dates. I stood a lot of watches and made a lot of log entries.
Personally, I like dating things in ascending or descending order
Hey! Me too! 🤝
Ignoring the coding side of things…
It’s relative. And also works easier to navigate the calendar. If we’re planning something for next year I pull up next year’s calendar. If it’s this years and we’re planning something for later this year, when I hear you say August, that’s the month I go to. But if you say the 27th of August, The first thing I heard was the 27th which could possibly be this month or next month if it’s say the 28th today.
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.
To make sure its not December right away. Fuck that entire month. Everyone hates December so much they throw the years biggest party at the end of it.
The month tells you more about conditions like weather but that’s kinda it.
regardless of the month, I think what matters first is to know what day of the month you are in
You’re telling me that if you have a list of scheduled dates in the near future to meet with clients/patients/whatever, you first want them sorted by day, and then month?
So this list is the order you want to see these in?
- 4/5/25
- 8/7/25
- 15/6/25
- 16/5/25
- 23/6/25
Doesn’t it make way more sense to see them sorted by month first, then day, so that they’re actually in chronological order.
- 5/4/25
- 5/16/25
- 6/15/25
- 6/23/25
- 7/8/25
The only way you could defend the former listing is if you’re also arguing that it makes sense to sort the list by the middle column, and hopefully we all agree that is just absurd. We don’t alphabetize people by their middle names. You don’t look up a word in the dictionary starting with the letter in the middle.
I jest, but I think this illustrates a real-life, commonplace example of when it makes sense. I agree that MM/DD/YYYY is not in order of magnitude, but I do believe it’s in order of most significance to least significance given the timescales we are typically dealing with.
Such a waste. 2025-06-01. Easy. Chronological.
So,
- OP is asking why month before day rather than day before month
- In your example, it’s not clear whether you are doing Y-M-D or Y-D-M, but I assume you are putting month before day, so we agree on that part. But
- I think we’re all in favor of: Most significant on the left -> Least significant on the right. I’m just arguing that, most if the time, for the most common uses, Month is most significant. It’s just more common that you’re looking at a list of dates that all span the next few months than a list of dates that are all within this month, or beyond a year.
Out of curiosity: do you also find it weird that (I’m assuming) you use hour:minute order when reading the clock, instead of minute:hour? Would saying the minute first make more sense to you?
This is already done often.
Quarter after 4 aka 4:15
10 to 5 aka 4:50.
Half past noon aka 12:30
No
Idk but I think it works best for us. I like how July 4th 2025 sounds over 04 July 2025. Call it cultural differences I suppose and that’s that.
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. I usually use MMDDYYYY when I’m dealing with other (US) people and ISO standard for my own stuff.
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.
Interesting thing about how Chinese time is organized is locations are also stated big to small. Last names then first names etc.
Locations have a last name and a first name in Chinese?
China’s first name is actually Jim, believe it or not.
I mean the larger family name comes before the personal name. Implying a connection between number, place, and naming sequences
Chinese is also weird imho. If I remember correctly, they put the details of an action first in a sentece and the verb that defines the action itself goes last with some exceptions.
Hungarian comes to my mind which is similar and always follows the context first, details later rule. They use “yyyy.mm.dd.”, “family name first, given name last”, “country, city, street, street number order for locations”, and the word order of their grammar is similar too, details are always at the end of the sentence.
You’re thinking of Japanese not Chinese. Chinese grammar is more similar to English.
That’s interesting about Hungarian though!
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.
you tell time HH/mm to provide the larger context first, not mm/HH.
Except not everywhere does, at least in speech. Half past ten. Quarter to eight. Five past three.
Although in the US I suppose you do say ten thirty, and seven forty-five? So at least you are consistent!
This pretty much sums it up for me, knowing the month first conveys a lot of information. Then the specific day gives more precision, year you can often assume but it’s there in case it’s not what you expected.
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.
I’m sorry but it doesn’t 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 don’t call it that, but I learned later that’s what it is. They enforce YYYY-MM-DD on all documents.
YYYYMMDD is commonly used throughout East Asia.
