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Why do Americans want to know the month first and the day second? (lemmy.world)

submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by NONE_dc@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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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.

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[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz -1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] barryamelton@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Such a waste. 2025-06-01. Easy. Chronological.

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 2 points 4 days ago

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.