Misleading Odd Dates

Verbalized, today would be: the Seventh of May, 2009.

In the United States (and countries under their influence), the date format is usually ‘Month/ Day/Year’ (either 2 or 4 digit year).

Verbalized, today would be: May the Seventh, 2009.

Hence, in a country like Canada (where both forms are in general use), if the ‘Day’ is less than 13, there remains some confusion as to whether 04/07/09 is April 7th 2009 or the 4th of July 2009.

Now, if you use the SI format (CCYYMMDD – as in much of the Metric world), we would only have five Odd Days (per Century if you drop the ‘CC’ part):

(20)01 03 05

(20)03 05 07

(20)05 07 09

(20)07 09 11

(20)09 11 13

The SI format is often used in the realm of computers when performing Date calculations and sorting records by date.

Now, bearing all three formats in mind, think of what the date 04/07/09 could mean! April 7th 2009, the 4th of July 2009 or 2004 July 7.

2009/05/07 would be so much simpler!

By Dave Thompson of Ajax, Ontario