| Time and Date |
| A few years back I stumbled upon a propopsal posted on the Internet calling for date format reason. The complaint was essentially that it doesn't make sense to write the date in the US common format of month-day-year, such as April 17, 2016. Rather, we should adopt the international format of day-month-year, or 17 April 2016. |
| While others have proposed this same change, their arguments were normally based either on adopting a more universal standard, much like we should adopt the metric system, or an appeal to simplifying the format by removing the required punctuation, which if missing can result in difficulties of reading due to digits merging. |
| What struck me, however, about this person's proposal was the justification argument, which, essentially, appealed to the standard representation of time in the hours-minutes-seconds format. Just as time progresses uniformly from the larger to smaller units, date representation should do the same. The day-month-year format does have a uniform progression, while the month-day-year format does not. |
| Yet, given the primary justification, I found the proposed format inherently wrong. Day-month-year progresses left-to-right from smaller units to larger units. The time format hours-minutes-seconds goes left-to-right from larger to smaller units. The equivalent date format would be year-month-day. |
| In storing files on my computer and where date ordering is important, I frequently use the year-month-day format as the first part of the filename. I represent the month by two digits, such as 2016-04-17 or 20160417. For example, a file "Bill.pdf" might then be named "2016-04-17_Bill.pdf" or "2016.04.Bill.pdf" which when using name sorting ends up sorted by date. Note the more human readable form would be 2016 April 17. |
| I have found this approach preferable to sorting the folder by date. Most files are appropriately sorted by name. Constantly switching the sorting from "by name" to "by date" and back is annoying. Further, occasionally the same folder contains files where name ordering is appropriate for some and date ordering for others. |
| It is unlikely that this year-month-day date format will ever become adopted by a majority of the world's population as it requires a change for users of both formats. However, it does have advantages. |
| The combined date-time format would be year-month-day hours-minutes-seconds, which progresses left-to-right uniformly from large to small units. A date-time stamp would thus become: |
| 2016 April 17 14:15:26 |
| I have used this form, again with the month converted to a 2 digit number, for records in log files. It permits combining multiple log records from various sources and sorting to better understand the temporal events portrayed. |
| A further advantage, although a minor one, has to do with how the date is read with missing data. Some examples: April 17; 2016 April; 14:15; April 17 14:15. All these are formed by omitting unneeded components and the appropreiate connector character (space or colon). |
| Almost as an aside, I find the international format, for all its suggested advantages, annoying at best. 17 April is really a shorthand for the more formal "17th day of April", which is used frequently in legal documents, probably for historical reasons. I suspect the reason for using that form has more to do with scribes being paid by the word rather than the document! |
| Bottom line is this: 2016 April 17 14:15:26 as a date-time stamp makes good sense; it is logical and should be used, especially anyplace where automatic ordering is required (which also implies converting the month to two digits). However, I will continue to use the April 17, 2016 format as I and my normal audience is more familiar with it. |
| In other words, I don't plan to change! |