M/D/YY or D/M/YY?

Every once in a while, I feel like writing a stupid post. Today is one of those days. I have periodically seen how foreign countries write dates. We write dates in the m/d/yy format (numerical month, day, and year) while others prefer d/m/yy (day, numerical month, and year) Which is better?

While m/d/yy is more convenient for me, I actually think that it's kind of ridiculous. The longest time period in the display is the year. The shortest is the date. The order - medium, short, then long - doesn't make a whole lot of sense. By contrast, d/m/yy - short, medium, then long - seems reasonable.

In all honesty, I don't think either format is ideal. Although I frequently revert to the familiar m/d/yy, my preference is yyyy-mm-dd. What does this mean? You start with the full year rather than the final two digits. This is followed by the two-digit month, using leading zeros if needed. The final piece is the two-digit day of the month, again using leading zeros if needed.

There are two primary reasons I prefer this approach. The first has to do with sorting. To me, sorting should reflect a left-to-right approach since that is how most sorting works. If you want to use computer software that doesn't recognize values as dates, putting the year first makes more sense. This scenario is also why I prefer to include leading zeroes. Even if you use software that recognizes dates or manually sorts dates, it makes more sense to display the most significant value for sorting first.

The other reason I like the yyyy-mm-dd format is because it is more in line with how our numerical system works. When we write down numbers, we go from thousands to hundreds to tens to ones. We go from the largest values to the smallest. In terms of dates, this would mean that we should go from years to months to the day of the month.

You might have also noticed another change that I would prefer. Instead of using slashes, I like to use dashes. This is primarily because dashes work better with computers. When I take pictures, I usually put them in folders reflecting the date taken. A slash is usually used to identify folders. This means that the slash is unavailable. There are other situations as well in which the slash is reserved. I have found that the dash is a more reliable way to divide the different components of the date.