Whilst we're on this, please help me understand MM/DD/YY?
The rest of the world has the eminently more sensible DD/MM/YY. The amount of time I spend trying to work out if 2/10 is February or October is (well in truth) a terribly minor inconvenience. I suggest, that to help, no dates are ever in this format until the day of the the month is the 13th or greater. Thank you in advance.
Better yet, let's all just use MMM in future - Feb/10 or 2/Oct - simplez!!!
Well. It's... complicated. And I say that as somebody who's been tortured by having to learn all three different ways of notation.
Let's get the first one out of the way: YYYY/MM/DD. This is the only LOGICAL one, as it makes sorting by date so very, very much easier. It only appeals to geeks like myself, however.
Then there's DD/MM/YYYY. This just doesn't make sense to me, since the most important information should be at the beginning, in my logical opinion (as well as that of the Silent Majority who always, somehow, seem to agree with me). Who gives a hootin' owl fart what the day is? There's a huge difference, given how seasons work on our planet which we happen to inhabit, as to whether it's the 21st of February or the 21st of August.
Which leads us to MM/DD/YYYY which, for everyday purposes, is more useful. It tells you what time of year it is, then what date it is (which nobody cares about unless their mortgage is due) and finally what year it is, which even fewer people care about unless they're idiot amateur historians like myself.
Which is why it's complicated. My inner geek tells me to use YYYY/MM/DD, my everyday personality tells me to use MM/DD/YYYY, and my radio training tells me to use DD/MM/YYYY (except I usually leave out the YYYY because people on the other end not knowing what year it is aren't really worth wasting my time on). Oh, and never use the ordinals when on the horn or everybody is going to laugh at you.
Complicated, I tell you.
Thanks for coming to my TEDx talk.
