I’ve been dealing with people and websites from several countries recently, and there’s something that many groups handle differently: date formats. Depending of who or what I’m communicating with, today’s date might be 7/9/2015, 9-7-2015, 2015-07-09, July 9, 2015, or even 7/9/15. It’s complicated and error-prone, especially if you don’t realize how a given person has chosen to write down said date.

As such, can I propose that everyone should use 2015-07-09? It’s simple, obvious, and placing the year first avoids the issue where you don’t know if 07/09/2015 was written in the American format (9th of July) or in the European format (7th of September). Additionally, it keeps a logical progression if you place a time next to it: 2015-07-09 12:34:56 goes from the largest unit (the unit) to the smallest one (seconds). There’s also no excuse at this point not to always write the year using four digits.

As an added bonus, if you name several computer files in this format, they’ll automatically be sorted from oldest to latest, and you can even flip the display order with a click or two. It’s convenient and simpler for everyone!

#date #musings #standards #iso8601

– Doctacosa