Nerd Pride Radio

How do you write dates? words? dashes? slashes? Julian date?

Me: 08-15-2020 I used to use a two digit year, but the 2020 and requirements at work have spilled over into my personal habits

20200815.

Of course, if I am creating notes for projects. It makes it easily sortable and searchable.

I'm with Flame... except I put dashes in.

Okay... not exactly true. When writing dates (on a check or when signing something) I use slashes and a 2-digit year (8/15/20).

When typing, I go yyyy-mm-dd for exactly the reasons Flame says... this actually allows you to sort by date when put into a filename or in a context that doesn't directly recognize dates. The hyphens are probably extraneous, but they make it easier to process for humans.

And furthermore, removes ambiguity when it comes to communication. You almost never see yyyy dd mm.

Huh. When I put dates in file names, I still put them at the end. But I'm used to sorting by date.

I do mm/dd/yy. Not because it's better but it's what people are used to and communication is important. Entry systems with other methods have higher error rates because people resort to their norm without thinking about it (unless you also have international users who are used to dd/mm/yy, then you're screwed whatever set up you use because some will mess it up).

I like SAS's date9 format (15Aug2020) as it is clear what part is what.

On checks or when signing and dating documents, it's mm/dd/yyyy. When taking notes on the computer or using in computer file names, its yyyy-mm-dd or yyyymmdd, for the same reasons mentioned by Mike and Flameblade (been doing it that way since the early 90s, although at that point it was yymmdd because of limits on filename length). When referencing dates in emails, I'll usually spell out the month in order to avoid ambiguity.