Dates

Dates where the month is 12 or less and the day is 12 or less cause confusion between the US and much of the rest of the world. Since a fully written out day is usually like March 12, 1950 in the US we would write 03/12/1950 or 3/12/50. Much of the rest of the world writes 12/3/50 (or variants with the day first). As a programmer, I hate both as neither is sortable and converting from how dates are actually stored is a PITA. 1950-03-12 or 19500312 sorts and is clear and easy to break combine into the stored number. Of course I'm not advocating to use that. here. Generally a date/time is 1950-03-12 07:20:00 (7:20am on March 12, 1950) which is completely sortable as text or with the dashed and colon removed as text, or stored as a number (as they are internally)

BTW, the US is a melting pot and not all people US month/day/year so it can be confusing here too.

There are many ways to write a date that cannot be confused:
Most of the worlds military: 12MAR50 - 12MAR1950 - 12-MAR-1950 (two digits years was a big problem at Y2K time!)
Written out: March 12, 1950 - 12 March 50 (again, two digits years are not clear but for almost everything here they would be)
Semi-Computer, sortable: 1950-MAR-12

In other words, keep the textual full or short month and use the 4-digit year and everyone should understand.

Don’t get me started, it’s even worse with time../

I work on international projects a lot. It’s not uncommon to have guys in US and the East and in Europe, etc.

And then one of them asks for a Teams meeting and emails out ‘can we meet at 6’?

And I’m like ‘6 what FFS’?

06.00 or 18.00?

And which f*ckin time zone?!?

It’s not difficult to right 18.00 CET is it ?

Fast Eddie said:

Don’t get me started, it’s even worse with time../

I work on international projects a lot. It’s not uncommon to have guys in US and the East and in Europe, etc.

And then one of them asks for a Teams meeting and emails out ‘can we meet at 6’?

And I’m like ‘6 what FFS’?

06.00 or 18.00?

And which f*ckin time zone?!?

It’s not difficult to right 18.00 CET is it ?

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No, it's not. but worse is a Teams, Zoom, or Google call to Israel where they give IST (Israel Standard Time) (UTC+2), you lookup the IST time and get India Standard Time (UTC+5:30) without realizing it.

If everyone would specify UTC or GMT it would be nice. It gets really bad with Summer/Daylight Savings times - not all places have it and when it starts/stops is not universal.

Having spent most of my life involved in one way or another with the US military, I wish we would all use a 24-hour clock. - 1800 and 0600 are crystal clear 6 is not!

When I was in the Army we used Zulu time, which I believe was GMT.
Jaydee

In Cornwall we just say “dreckly” or in Spanish it’s manana

jaydee75 said:

When I was in the Army we used Zulu time, which I believe was GMT.
Jaydee

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ZULU was GMT and is now UTC. GMT and UTC are basically the same, but UTC is more precise. GMT has been around since the late 1800s and is based on observations. UTC is based on atomic clocks.

Actually, UTC is not a time zone but, 0000 UTC and 0000 GMT are very close but don't confuse thinking BST is British Standard Time (as I have), it is British Summer Time (Like our Daylight Savings Time).

Military messages listed times like 2300Z (11pm GMT) to be precise about the time.

I agree 100%, it's very irritating. UTC & GMT do not change so why are they not used more ?

Even worst when you drive on the wrong side of the road.

I think I will stick to what has worked for the last 62 years.
Day time.
Night time.
AM.
PM.
Day,month,year.

Who am I to try an reinvent the wheel.
Of course once upon a time it was month, day, year in the UK until changed to something a little more logical given you need days to make a month, the horse in front of the cart.

ashman said:

Even worst when you drive on the wrong side of the road.

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You can argue about who is responsible for the first self-propelled vehicles, but you can't argue that driving on the left is right since Henry Ford didn't do that.