I’m sorry but it doesn’t make sense TO ME. Based on what I was taught, regardless of the month, I think what matters first is to know what day of the month you are in, if at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of said month. After you know that, you can find out the month to know where you are in the year.
What is the benefit of doing it the other way around?
EDIT: To avoid misunderstandings:
- I am NOT making fun OF ANYONE.
- I am NOT negatively judging ANYTHING.
- I am totally open to being corrected and LEARN.
- This post is out of pure and honest CURIOSITY.
So PLEASE, don’t take it the wrong way.
Ignoring the coding side of things…
It’s relative. And also works easier to navigate the calendar. If we’re planning something for next year I pull up next year’s calendar. If it’s this years and we’re planning something for later this year, when I hear you say August, that’s the month I go to. But if you say the 27th of August, The first thing I heard was the 27th which could possibly be this month or next month if it’s say the 28th today.
American here. No idea. Either DD/MM/YYYY or YYYY/MM/DD are more logical, but here we are. When naming/renaming files and including a date in the name, I’ll usually do YYYYMMDD format somewhere. If I’m emailing/texting others, I use MM/DD/YYYY.
Fun little story, the department I work in recently began to work with some people over in the UK, and even though I brought up the date format differences, we’ve already had someone of gett the month and day flipped and it caused some confusion on our end.
Year is the most significant (read: big) unit in the list, but it is the least significant (pertinent to daily life) unless you’re a time traveler. Of month and day, month is more significant than day in both size and pertinence, so it gets ordered first. But when sorting things into folders or file naming conventions, biggest category is always the best.
To make sure its not December right away. Fuck that entire month. Everyone hates December so much they throw the years biggest party at the end of it.
I write the date a bit different depending on which format its going on.
For example, computers like to sort things alphabetically. If I’m writing electronic diary entries, I’ll name the document as “2025-06-01.”
If I’m hand signing a legal document, I prefer to sign it as “01JUN2025” or “01JUN25” if space is an issue.
If the format is preselected and deviation isn’t allowed, I’ll just write it like everyone else does.
Personally, I like dating things in ascending or descending order. Day month year, or year month day.
Most significant digits first. You write the thousands place before the hundreds, you write the month before the day. Of course, the whole argument is blow away when you write the year at the end instead of the beginning. (ISO YYYY-MM-DD dates for the win.)
little Endian entered the chat.
Most significant digits first.
That would only make sense if the US wrote the year first, but they don’t. They just seem to slap the date together in a random order
I think that’s context relevant though. If we think about when dates are most frequently used (news, business, planning) it’s typically within the year (or month will give context).
That added with the fact it’s not uncommon in some situations to just provide month/day.
That being said, I don’t think either is better or worse. Just a preference kinda thing, unlike the issue between metric and imperial units.
regardless of the month, I think what matters first is to know what day of the month you are in
You’re telling me that if you have a list of scheduled dates in the near future to meet with clients/patients/whatever, you first want them sorted by day, and then month?
So this list is the order you want to see these in?
- 4/5/25
- 8/7/25
- 15/6/25
- 16/5/25
- 23/6/25
Doesn’t it make way more sense to see them sorted by month first, then day, so that they’re actually in chronological order.
- 5/4/25
- 5/16/25
- 6/15/25
- 6/23/25
- 7/8/25
The only way you could defend the former listing is if you’re also arguing that it makes sense to sort the list by the middle column, and hopefully we all agree that is just absurd. We don’t alphabetize people by their middle names. You don’t look up a word in the dictionary starting with the letter in the middle.
I jest, but I think this illustrates a real-life, commonplace example of when it makes sense. I agree that MM/DD/YYYY is not in order of magnitude, but I do believe it’s in order of most significance to least significance given the timescales we are typically dealing with.
Such a waste. 2025-06-01. Easy. Chronological.
So,
- OP is asking why month before day rather than day before month
- In your example, it’s not clear whether you are doing Y-M-D or Y-D-M, but I assume you are putting month before day, so we agree on that part. But
- I think we’re all in favor of: Most significant on the left -> Least significant on the right. I’m just arguing that, most if the time, for the most common uses, Month is most significant. It’s just more common that you’re looking at a list of dates that all span the next few months than a list of dates that are all within this month, or beyond a year.
The month tells you more about conditions like weather but that’s kinda it.
Out of curiosity: do you also find it weird that (I’m assuming) you use hour:minute order when reading the clock, instead of minute:hour? Would saying the minute first make more sense to you?
No
This is already done often.
Quarter after 4 aka 4:15
10 to 5 aka 4:50.
Half past noon aka 12:30
Idk but I think it works best for us. I like how July 4th 2025 sounds over 04 July 2025. Call it cultural differences I suppose and that’s that.
I don’t have a clue why we do MM-DD-YYYY and personally I hate how dates are done in the west, to a degree.
For a maths course I’ve been taking at college, I never use MM-DD in my notebook because that and DD-MM are stupid in my opinion. I always spell out the month first to ensure I don’t get mixed up. I honestly envy that some languages like Chinese and Japanese have an individual character to help distinguish between month and day.
Also, I would love if every country using the MM-DD or vice versa format could all agree on which format to use for everyday things.
Because the day doesn’t matter when you work every day between your three jobs that won’t give you 40 hours in order to not give you health insurance.
That escalated quickly…
If you name your files YEAR-MONTH-DAY_Filename they be in chronological order when sorted by the name field.
YYYYMMDD is the only correct answer.
That’s not a good explanation for the question, because the convention was established before computers.
I answered the one question he posed. What is the benefit of doing it the other way around?
It sorts by what seems to me historically by relevance, i.e. which day is asked more often because it seems a more frequent timeframe for everyday use in a medieval society compared to the month (with the seasons as something in between those two).
And I agree that since the digital age yyyy-mm–dd has significant advantages!
I mean it’s easier to sort like that for humans too.
I don’t think that’s true; before computers people would get used to one way or another and it would have 0 impact on their ability to compare.
When you are searching for a file in a filing cabinet of a finance department, it’d be a nightmare if records were filed by month first and year after.
Generally we say June 1, not 1 June or 1st of June… So 6/1 makes complete sense.
For anything “official”, like a work spreadsheet, I’ll use ISO format YYYY-MM-DD for clarity and ease of filtering/sorting.
Who is “we”? Americans? I usually hear Americans say “June 1st,” not “June 1.”
We meaning USAians, since we’re the kinda the only ones who use Month-Day
It’s just an example. We say June first, that’s why we write 6/1
Are you really going to nitpick over the st and ignore their entire point?
Not ignoring their point – I agree with the explanation for 6/1, but that’s not relevant here. Genuinely am not sure if they were from an area where they say “1” instead of “1st.”
The “st” is implied, it’s just one of those things you have to get used to. Like reading prices here, it looks like “$25”, but you would read it as “twenty-five dollars.” No one says “it costs dollar-sign twenty five.”
You already answered your own question, bud.
it doesn’t make sense TO ME. Based on what I was taught
Why do you think other people are different than you?
I’m just curious… Is that a crime?
