Asklemmy

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.

The month tells you more about conditions like weather but that's kinda it.

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.

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.

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.

Why, when you want to know the time, do you read the hours first then the minutes? Why not just read the minutes and then figure out the hour you're in?

You already answered your own question, bud.

it doesn't make sense TO ME. Based on what I was taught

Why do you think other people are different than you?

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?