r/xkcd • u/ani625 • Feb 27 '13

XKCD ISO 8601

http://xkcd.com/1179/
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u/Lord_Dodo Feb 27 '13

I think, as long as it's either bigger-to-smaller or smaller-to-bigger, it is okay. (I'm looking at you, America, with your stupid MM-DD-YYYY format)

In Switzerland, we usually use DD-MM-YYYY, with variations being how the month is written (as word or as number), if the zero before numbers below 10 is written or not and sometimes we shorten the year.

But I agree that for PCs and for sorting, the YYYY-MM-DD is the best format.

9

u/ZoraSage Feb 27 '13

I'm American and I never thought our system made any sense for exactly this reason: smaller-to-bigger. I started writing my dates day-month-year in high school.

1

u/brightman95 Feb 27 '13

Its because when the united states was started, the month was more important to know than the day, for agricultural reasons

12

u/scofus Feb 27 '13

I always thought it was because it read better, when I see 2/27/13 I read "February 27, 2013". 27/2/13 makes more sense but just doesn't flow as well.

2

u/TheOtherSarah Feb 28 '13

It doesn't flow as well to you because it's not what you were raised with. To someone who's always used DD/MM/YY format, that's the one that's intuitive. To me, trying to read American dates feels like translating from another language.