Map of which countries post dates in the right way or the wrong way

Chuck hasn't posted one of his excellent map threads in a while, and I came across this today. It shows which countries post dates in a logical way (small-to-medium-to-big - dd-mm-yyyy - or big-to-medium-to-small - yyyy-mm-dd), and which countries post them in an illogical way (medium-to-small-to-big).

Not that I'm judging.



So.... Any idea why the Americans do it the way they do? Is there some historical thing that led to this?

 

Ah, yes, that'd be it.

Driving on the right makes sense: you choose one side or the other and stick with it (unless you're Burma or a couple of other countries). Either left or right is a logical choice.

The odd thing with this is that there isn't a logical progression. YYYY-MM-DD and DD-MM-YYYY both have logical progressions.

 

Sigh. That's just so yesterday.

 

I think either makes sense. With one you're working from the here and now to work out where you stand in the broader scheme of things. With the other, you start out from infinity and narrow down your position.

It's the same with addresses. The British version, for example, goes:

Apartment number, Street number, Street name​

Town name​

County name​

Country name​

...while the Chinese version goes:

Country name, province name, city name, district name, street name, street number, apartment number.​

In the same way that we covered with the dates, each of these has a logical progression. The British version starts at the location, and steadily works its way out to show where it is in the broader scheme of things; the Chinese version starts out from infinity and works out where you stand. And I suppose it's even the same with names: in Britain the personal name comes first and the surname second: what it says is who you are, and then where you stand in society; in China, it's the other way round. I'm sure it's possible to make an argument on the date, address and name thing about the place of individualism in society or something.

But the American dates, lurching back and forth instead of progressing naturally, make no sense. And nor do German addresses.

It's cool living in the future. Tuesday afternoon is, you'll be pleased to know, quite nice.

We do not yet all wear silver onesies and get our nutrition from tablets.

But there is this amazing new kind of car. It's got an internal combustion engine, like the ones you had on Monday, but it's got an electric motor that augments the ICE. And you can go up to a kilometre on the electric motor without even using the ICE. It's amazing. The future is soooo cool.

Yes. And they almost sound American, but they have pictures of the Queen on their money.

That's a sensible way to avoid confusion. I know some people who use Roman numerals for the month too, so today would be 17.xii.2013.

 

Could it be a linguistic thing? Before shorthand written dates were common, maybe more British people said "the 17th of December 2013" and more Americans said "December 17th, 2013". (Except they wouldn't say that, because before shorthand written dates were common, it wasn't yet 2013. But you know what I mean.)

 

Ah, well you're in luck. Tuesday afternoon is 79F and sunny, with a gentle sea breeze.

And they say global warming isn't real.

Aaagh! You must be from one of those parallel universes!

Just open it and sniff it. It's probably OK.