Mails not from me

[Tom Browder]

On Mon, Nov 8, 2010 at 10:42, Jordon Bedwell <jordon at envygeeks.com> wrote:
> On 11/08/2010 09:47 AM, Tom Browder wrote:
>>> yeah, Americans. Go figure...
>> As an American (USA) I have to say I've never seen YYYYDDMM, only YYYYMMDD.
>
> Americans don't write their dates as YYYYDDMM they write them as
> MM/DD/YYYY or YYYY-MM-DD (as required by FIPS, NIST and ANSI standards)

Tell that to the DoD as they (or the several uniformed services) do
use that as well as other formats I can find in official reports or
documents:

  YYYY.MM.DD
  YYYY/MM/DD
  MMDDYYYY    <== very old doc, probably superseded or removed

And one source says the ISO date standard does recognize several
alternative formats including omitting the hyphens.

Most US federal docs I see these days do a reasonable job of not using
the ambiguous old-style numeric data formats without at least
identifying what the numbers mean (but my company doesn't seem to have
gotten the word).

I have been on a crusade since the late nineties among my friends,
colleagues, and acquaintances to show them the benefits of the ISO
data format, but the slogging is tough--old habits die hard.

Regards,

-Tom

Thomas M. Browder, Jr.
Niceville, Florida
USA