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Tom Holland tweeted a date and caused confusion to many Americans
- Thread starter Arthands
- Start date
I also recently found out that many Americans aren't familiar with "A" format papers despite the rest of the world using the system.
For real?
Day/month/year is the correct method.
Canada uses all three. I guess "officially" it uses ISO 8601 (YYYY-MM-DD) but since it shares a close "heritage" to the UK, we sometimes use DD/MM/YYYY but it is close to the US since it is its closest neighbor, most of the time we use MM/DD/YYYY.
So it's damn f'n annoying unless it's the 13th day and onwards. If you're not watching or keeping update on those major expos, game shows, etc... You'll find yourself annoyed when you discover that the game that you're interested in will be out 02/11 which is NEXT MONTH!!!! But then you realized that it was November 2 instead. (damn you gran turismo 6 and ebgames.ca 6/12/13....)
So it's damn f'n annoying unless it's the 13th day and onwards. If you're not watching or keeping update on those major expos, game shows, etc... You'll find yourself annoyed when you discover that the game that you're interested in will be out 02/11 which is NEXT MONTH!!!! But then you realized that it was November 2 instead. (damn you gran turismo 6 and ebgames.ca 6/12/13....)
Seeing something like "29/2/16" is so aggressively ugly. For lack of a universal standard I prefer all dates just use month abbreviations like APR, SEP, etc. so I don't have to do further research just to figure out what date "10/7/12" is actually supposed to be
Is that a standard around the world?
Paper size format.
I get that Americans are used to their date format and may get confused when they see dates like 14/01/21 but I don't get the "what the hell is this" comments. Do most of them not know there's another format? If it's confusing at first, just switch the first two numbers. I'd always imagined this is something they learn in elementary school.
It's like the metric system. There's really no need to know how many centimetres are in an inch (it's 2.5) but at least they know there's another measuring system.
It's like the metric system. There's really no need to know how many centimetres are in an inch (it's 2.5) but at least they know there's another measuring system.
Reading this thread I must admit the YYYY-MM-DD format is superior having never used it.
The US version is still the worst though
The US version is still the worst though
It's important to remember posts on any form of Social Media are inherently for attention seeking. Making loud or inflammatory reactions to mundane things is a big attention getter.
Are you American?
It's not 'more formal' if it's echoing the way it's written if your country uses the day first system. This leads me to believe you are American and therefore saying the month first makes perfect sense.
No, I advocate for MM-DD-YY, since the middle portion of a string is forgotten, as I lay out here:
Now, yes, some events are referenced solely as a year, which is to say, year should [almost] always be included. The next most important part to be included is month, giving as it does the relation of events amongst a year, which is why you see historical events summarized in ways like "in July of 1969, mankind landed on the moon". Yes, of course, there is a particular and exact date in which that happened. But that exact date is a less useful reference point than the month; if you were to include minimal information in order of importance, it would be year (of course), then month, because month is more important than date. Events are often discussed like this, laying out the month for a general sense of when things happen in a year:US date format is easily the best.
When talking about any string of numbers, or really most information, you're more likely to recall the beginning and end of that string.
Wikiwand - Serial-position effect
Serial-position effect is the tendency of a person to recall the first and last items in a series best, and the middle items worst. The term was coined by Hermann Ebbinghaus through studies he performed on himself, and refers to the finding that recall accuracy varies as a function of an item's...www.wikiwand.com
Days are almost universally the least useful part of a date to refer to at scale - like once you're 4-6 weeks away from an event, it doesn't really matter - so of course they should go in the middle. If there's need for extra precision, well, it's included.
Having it be the opposite, year/day/month, is arguable, but often times, referring to the year is less useful than the month. Of course, there are plenty of times when I'd care about the year first and foremost, like, say, events from 5+ years ago, but as someone who talks about and considers most events as they might have happened/will happen within a window of 3-5 years away at *most*, month is a helpful thing to know. Think about 2020, for instance. I'm sure a salient question after that is "well, which month? It was an impactful year" - and then the same for 2019, 2018 probably, maybe by 2017 it all kinda blends together...I believe month is more practical to know first for most moment to moment considerations of a timeframe. Historical events, like "when did we land on the moon"? Sure, year is a more useful benchmark. But most of the time, month is a more reliable to center on for going through life.
Either way though, having month be in the middle is just....not good. At all. Any arguments to the contrary are based on meaningless concepts of "size" and ignore practical frequency/psychology. And I grew up in Europe.
2018 Events - Pop Culture, U.S. Politics & World | HISTORY
Milestones in the #MeToo movement, the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination hearings and an unusual royal wedding stood out in the year 2018.
www.history.com
You see them talk about specific months and only months, even though, yes, of course, events therein were on specific dates. But those dates aren't given, because they're not important in giving an overview, and if additional precision were to be required, then the month would be included anyway. It's so automatic that it's not considered, but yes, events most certainly are referenced as happening on a month-by-month basis all the time. Or see how wikipedia lays out the same year:
Wikiwand - 2018
2018 (MMXVIII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, the 2018th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 18th year of the 3rd millennium and the 21st century, and the 9th year of the 2010s decade.
www.wikiwand.com
With months as the overall headers, and then dates in the particulars. Which would indicate that month, as a frame of reference, is more valuable, which is why it is there serving as an indexing process that someone can dig into if they want additional info. You don't see the headers labeled as "the 1st of a month", or "the 2nd of a month", or anything like that, because that would be absurd. Because month is more important to know. Most important in this case? Year (the category of the page itself; 2018). Second most important? Month (the category of the headers). Third? Date, which is why it's as deep down as you can go.
Obviously, it's not a huge burden to include more, but in terms of ranking of importance of what to include, then date is always the least important, which is why it is never, ever, given without the month, and only comes up when people are already laying out the entirety of information. It is, in that sense, a luxury, which is to say, comparatively less important.
That being the case, and given how the brain processes information, it is only reasonable to put the less important part (the date) in the position which is forgotten more often (the middle).
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Yes, I'm American. Thats exactly exactly what I was saying. Not right. Not wrong. But that's how it is here.
Serial-position effect has almost no bearing when your word only has 3 elements...
Where do you read such things?
Where I'm at (Europe), it's either year or full date.
Of course, it's a chronological retrospective of a year, the format itself tends to lead to such results; if you do a century retrospective, you'll only mention the year, and not the month. If you do a month retrospective, you'll only mention days, not hours (or maybe weeks and not days, if you get creative). You always use the next smallest unit, omitting the smaller ones.
Yes, it goes year -> month -> day (logical order), not month -> day -> year................
Most important is relative; for my meetings this month, I'd argue the day is the most important part.
You'd also casually only say a day witrhout the month if the month is obvious in context.
But it *does* have bearing, and we're talking about the margins of things anyway. It doesn't matter what event you refer to, dates is always less important for the vast majority of events referenced. How often do occurrences outside of the last several weeks have their temporal importance contingent on hours? Seconds? Much less often than they have their importance contingent on year and month. There are massively more events in a century than in a month, for instance, which means more things to refer to. I gave you several examples of how things are referenced to in terms of month without the date; this never, ever happens with dates without also the month. Yes, in a day to day basis, date is more important. Most events are not on day to day basis, because day to day only really is useful for 4-6 months out, whereas the entirety of human history, before and since, is literally infinitely larger than that.Serial-position effect has almost no bearing when your word only has 3 elements...
Where do you read such things?
Where I'm at (Europe), it's either year or full date.
Of course, it's a chronological retrospective of a year, the format itself tends to lead to such results; if you do a century retrospective, you'll only mention the year, and not the month. If you do a month retrospective, you'll only mention days, not hours (or maybe weeks and not days, if you get creative). You always use the next smallest unit, omitting the smaller ones.
Yes, it goes year -> month -> day (logical order), not month -> day -> year................
Most important is relative; for my meetings this month, I'd argue the day is the most important part.
You'd also casually only say a day witrhout the month if the month is obvious in context.
More countries use the DMY format around the world.
Only 10 countries use YMD as their only format.
... and month is less important than year for the vast majority of events that happened. That's how bigger timeframes (year vs month vs day vs hours and so on) work, I'm not sure what your point is.
And month is never mentioned without the year (and to be pedantic, no you showcased one retrospective that didn't have days, because smaller units are inherently irrelevant in retrospectives; the other example still had days, but ordered and clustered them chronologically (meaning by month, or YYYY (page) - MM (chapter) - DD (entry))).
Which is why, as I said, you are advocating more for YYYY-MM-DD (logically speaking) than for MM-DD-YYYY. Because exactly as you said, smaller units are only relevant without the timeframe provided by bigger units in very specific circumstances.
Absolutely speaking, year is the most important, and should be first, because without a year, both month and day are useless. Casually (when speaking), day is probably the most important. The cases where a month is the most important are few.
This
it's is like the one obscure american deviation from the norm that actually makes sense lol
...Right, month is less important than year. Which is what I said, many, many times, but month is then second most important, which is why it should be placed in the position in a string which gives rise to greater salience, ie, on the edges, marginal difference or not. So in terms of importance, you could have it be either:
132 - depending on if you think the first thing gets remembered moreso than the last (I haven't seen research on this either way)
or
231 - depending on if you think the last thing gets remembered moreso than the first.
Either way, middle is least remembered even if the difference is slight, and therefore, least important. Ie, day goes in the middle, because it is less necessary to know than the month or the year, and month goes on an edge, because there are two edges, and so the second most important grouping has to occupy one of them.
But then, per the serial postion effect, year should be first.
So IF that effect is relevant (that's your argument, not mine), it should be yyyy-dd-mm, according to your logic.
That doesn't mean it's not the standard. It's the format decided upon by the International Organization for Standardization. The same organization that sets the standards used across the globe for things like weight, temperature, and date/time formats.
Yes, and that's a valid approach too, which I discussed in the post I already linked you to:
Still, I'd accept YYDDMM too. But month in the middle? Absolutely not. That just doesn't make sense at all given how time, memory, and reference works; unnecessarily favoring aesthetic over function.
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So what you're saying is DD/YYYY/MM would actually be the best system for dates that are actually relevant to planning your daily life?
So just to clarify, hh:mm:ss is also nonsensical, and we should all use hh:ss:mm? Because that's the exact same logic.
Your whole argument also relies on the fact that for long series, first and last entry are better memorized.
I don't know for you, but I consider the most important feature of a date is to be intelligible, not how fast or easily i can memorize it. And to be intelligible, the best way is to have a logical structure. Jumping between timeframe sizes isn't logical.
Well, we rarely refer to events outside the immediate in terms of hours/seconds; I already laid out how in the immediate, yes, date is more relevant. It's already pretty intelligible, and if more people switched to a more logical setup, it would become even moreso. It's only less intelligible now due to unfamilarity, but if that's the case, there wouldn't be an argument at all besides "stick with what you know". When I moved to the US from Europe, I was in the same boat, but here I am, having since accepted the reality of the situation. So since we're talking about things outside of just being familiar with them, stands to reason there should be a logic which isn't just "looks good", and should take into consideration usage of events in terms of frequency - when non-immediate events to be referenced absolutely dwarf immediate ones - and salience construction.
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Ok, you mustbe trolling, right?
Dd-mm-yyyy and yyyy-mm-dd are not more intuitive and logical due to familiarity, but because that's how units work: you use them in order, from bigger to smaller or smaller to bigger.
Jumping randomly between units because in some cases, one is more important than the other, is completely arbitrary, and therefore not intutive.
Same as when you are anouncing the 8 best athlete in a run, you don't go 1-4-3-6-5-8-7-2, but from first to last, or the other way around.
Or to put it in an image:
It's not random at all; it gives importance of salience to importance of construction; ie, matches the two edges to the two components - year and month - which are more often useful to reference. Yes in other instances, which are not about the construction of temporal reference as we pass through that which we're describing, other setups can take precedence. Time is not athletic results; function beats out form, as well it should, which is why I bring up things like "how does memory work" and "this is how articles talking about the past lay out their references" instead of "triangles". Month should never be in the middle. Ever. It's like you're willfully misconstruing things, and as such, this argument is over.
I think they did a pretty good job showing why should always be in the middle lol
So again, if it is not random, minutes shouldn't be in the middle either?
A full moment in time should be written YY-hh-mm-DD-ss-MM? How do you do if you have to add smaller timeframes (ms for example), were do they go? And if you have to add bigger timeframes (like the japanese eras), where do they go?
The athletic results was just an example to underscore that going biggest to smallest or smallest to biggest is the more intuitive way to go. The pyramid image also shows it very well. Intuivity and practicality trump whatever marginal (at the very best, if even that) advantage the serialposiion effect may bring.