For no other reason than to be different and contrary. Metric system anyone?
this post was submitted on 31 May 2025
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The month first is best because consider what happens if a message gets cut off. You might get: "You'll be flying to New York on the first of ..." or "You'll be flying to New York on June..."
The first message doesn't tell you anything useful. Do you need to buy shorts or a parka? Do you have months to prepare or are you leaving in a few hours? Could this be an april fools joke? It's a 1/12 chance. Totally useless.
Second message, sure the details are unclear but at least you know what to pack and that you need to hurry about getting the rest of the message.
Historically, I don't know, but personally, I prefer YYYY-MM-DD style dates since they sort naturally in basically all computer software without having to think about it.
Free sorting is always the way to go.
Anyone who doesn't use ISO 8601 is wrong.
FACTS
There are plenty of other scenarios with a similar pattern of starting at the larger scale and then the specific.
TV shows: Season 2 Episode 9
Theatre: Act one, scene 3
Biblical: Book of John 3:16
Other books: Chapter 9, page 125.
Address: 123 Main St, Apt #2
Phone numbers: country code (area code) locality-individual
I'm not saying either is right or wrong, but there are precedents for either way.
Perhaps the most relevant of all: time of day. 9:30. Hours first, then minutes. I'm not from a location that does month-day ordering, but I think largest to smallest works excellently for time measurement, hence ISO 8601.
9:30 and 21:30, please
I'm surprised I didn't even think of that. It's so obvious!
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2-123 Main St, City, Province, Country
I'm guessing, but it's likely because the spoken form for a date is normally, 'May 31st, 2025" vs "The 31st of May, 2025", hence 05/31/25 v 31/05/25.
I once did some research on this exact topic, and my findings pretty much mirror your guess.
Not for me, e.g. "remember, remember the fifth of November" is how we remember the date of Guy Fawkes Night in the UK. "Fourth of July", "14th of February", "First of April", etc.
I guess you mean in the States, but perhaps they say it that way because they write their dates M-D-Y.
So, by the time someone in the UK has finished saying the day and "of," an American has said the month and day.
The US is finally more efficient!
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I'm sure the history is that, for most daily purposes, it was useful to know both. Knowing the larger element (the month) first sets the context for the smaller detail. For instance, saying I met someone for dinner on December 12 gives you the broader context (e.g. the season, possible relevant events) before the smaller detail of the day.
I think of it as, if you got shot halfway through telling me the date of something, "December" on its own is more useful information than "12". Technically, "12" narrows it down to fewer possible dates, but it could be at any time of year, while December only happens once a year, in March or whatever.
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Every digital clock displays hours:minutes:seconds. Largest to smallest. I see no reason not to follow the same pattern with the date year/month/day.
This is also how my phone time stamps a photo - year/month/day/hours/minutes/seconds.
This seems very logical to me.
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Because the month tells me more about how far in the future something is. If I have an appointment on the 12th of July, there's not much information in knowing it's on the 12th. 12th of what? But it's in July, so between 1 and 2 months in the future. If I need more info, then I'll pay attention to the day. So in order of information given.
Historical dates are similar, except I really just need (roughly) the year, and then a month if that's relevant. Knowing the exact date of a historical event is just showing off. But if you know the month, you know what season it was, what the weather was probably like. Was it planting/growing/harvest time? You can guess at a lot of things with just the month.
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It's inherited from a historic convention from the UK. Historically the rationale was that the month was more important than the year, so they put it first, although this has no useful consistency or order to it.
Unfortunately, kind of dumb decisions from the past tend to stick and keep existing for an unnecessary long time because people get used to them and then never change them. Popularity or habit can beat reason, objectivity etc...
Typewriter-optimized means it’s intentionally made to slow down your typing because the old typewriters couldn’t deal with too fast typing.
I wish that myth would die. If that was the case then E and R would be furthER away from each othER because being right next to each othER would make it likely for the two lettERs to bump into each othER.
Contrary to popular belief, the QWERTY layout was not designed to slow the typist down, but rather to speed up typing. Indeed, there is evidence that, aside from the issue of jamming, placing often-used keys farther apart increases typing speed, because it encourages alternation between the hands.
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The QWERTY keyboard was designed to speed typing up, not slow it down
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Why do you use 60 seconds in a minute and not an even 100? Why use randomly sized calendar months? Why do you say doce instead of diecidos?
Why do you use 60 seconds in a minute and not an even 100? Why use randomly sized calendar months?
Because 60 evenly divides into halves, thirds, fifths, sixths, etc, and because it's impossible to divide 365.2425 days into 12 months of equal length.
I'm a fan of 12 months of 30 with a 5 day new years in between
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Because fuck you, that’s why
When you speak it, do you say July 3rd or 3rd of July? Both are fine.
I speak speak Spanish, so we just say "Primero de Julio" (1st of July)" an then "Dos/tres/quince de Julio" (Two/three/fifteen of July). An of course, all are perfectly fine.
3rd of July, as I'm used to by the german 'dritter Juli'
I was taught DD/MM/YY and that's what I use in typed form, but I prefer MM/DD/YYYY, at least in speech e.g. 'June 13th 2025'. It feels cleaner to narrow by month, then day, otherwise you're mentally having to wait for context, working backwards. The year is almost irrelevant as it changes so infrequently, about once a year.
ISO 8601 for organising on a computer, as sorting by largest to smallest is the most logical.
I completely agree with you.
Linguistics
In UK English, it's considered proper to write "the 6th of March" as "6 March" and sometimes read as "6th March" which can be jarring to Americans as their shorthand is "March 6th" and when "6(th) March" is encountered in written form, it's expanded to the full "6th of March" when spoken
That doesn't mean this won't be yet another feature American English absorbs from UK English but right now flipping them in speech requires a few extra syllables and people are lazy
people are lazy
Kinda relatable ngl 😅
In Chinese, its also Month, then day.
Its always "五月 三十一号" (May 31st), never "三十一号 五月" (31st May)
When saying a day in history, the full format is used: 一九六九年 七月二十日 (1969 Year 7th Month 20th Day), but when you use it during every day life to refer to a day in the same year, the year is omitted. If you are referring to the same month, the month also get ommitted.
TLDR: Not unique to "Americans"
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