Todays date format in invoice

[Erik Haagensen]

My Australian bank statements are headed Statement Date: 31 December 2001.
Such dates are spoken as "thirty-first of December, two thousand and
eleven". They are also the date format I have on business letters, etc.
Very formal (especially legal) documents, e.g. my will, normally use a full
form like "Dated the 31st day of December, 2011".

>From the Australian Government Publishing Service's "Style Manual for
Authors, Editors and Printers" (1990):
"10.43: When a date is given in full, the following form should be used:
10 September 1987

This form is completely unambiguous, requires no punctuation and is logical
(proceeding from the day to the month to the year). It is typographically
superior to such forms as September 10, 1987 and 10th September, 1987,
because it avoids the confusion of adjacent numbers (as in the first
example), and requires fewer keystrokes."

I think that both the January 24, 2012 order of writing dates and of saying
them is principally non-North America, though what I would see as a North
Americanism (December 31, 2011) is gaining currency here.

Peter



Well - we are really antipodes ;-)

The Norwegian Standard Organization has adopted the ISO-rules for date
formatting - which is YYYY-MM-DD.
However "The Language Council of Norway"  recommend only this format in
foreign correspondance,
and actually urge norwegians to use the traditional writing.
(as used by 99% - I guess - of all norwegians for at least the last 100
years - another guess).
The traditional way is like 12.06.2011 or 12. juni 2011  - the sequence is
always day, month, year.

Even if the ISO-format is used by big norwegian companies this ISO-format
makes the common norwegian quite confused - at least as confused he is when
he sees the format in sequence month, day, year.

So in practise it is alway  day (dot) month (dot) year.
This correspond with the way it is spoken - witout the dots of course ;-)
Further - months and days can be written with a leading zero,
and years can be written with 2 or 4 digits - preferably 4 if there could
possibly be a confusion.


Interesting, Peter - thank you.



2012/1/25 prl <prl at ozemail.com.au>

> On 25/01/12 02:40, Derek Atkins wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> erik_h<erik.haa at gmail.com>  writes:
>>
>>  When I make a new invoice there are several dates that comes up.
>>> Invoice date, due date and dates for all lines in the invoice.
>>> They are fine and in accordance with my locale settings.
>>>
>>> However "todays date" - which probably is the printing date - comes up
>>> with
>>> another format: %B %#d, %Y
>>> (I assume this is a US format)
>>>
>> No, it's a more formal format, "<Month Name>  <Day>, Year".  E.g.,
>> January 24, 2012.  I don't think this is specifically US Centric.
>>
>>  My Australian bank statements are headed Statement Date: 31 December
> 2001. Such dates are spoken as "thirty-first of December, two thousand and
> eleven". They are also the date format I have on business letters, etc.
> Very formal (especially legal) documents, e.g. my will, normally use a full
> form like "Dated the 31st day of December, 2011".
>
> From the Australian Government Publishing Service's "Style Manual for
> Authors, Editors and Printers" (1990):
> "10.43: When a date is given in full, the following form should be used:
> 10 September 1987
>
> This form is completely unambiguous, requires no punctuation and is
> logical (proceeding from the day to the month to the year). It is
> typographically superior to such forms as September 10, 1987 and 10th
> September, 1987, because it avoids the confusion of adjacent numbers (as in
> the first example), and requires fewer keystrokes."
>
> I think that both the January 24, 2012 order of writing dates and of
> saying them is principally non-North America, though what I would see as a
> North Americanism (December 31, 2011) is gaining currency here.
>
> Peter
>



-- 
mvh
Erik Haagensen

Oslia
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