Writing dates and times

By accident, I discovered that Google Translate translates a date format of dd.mm.yyyy to mm/dd/yyyy. It’s unclear whether there is an established standard of using slashes for month-first dates and dots for day-first dates, but such a standard would eliminate great confusion. Below is a (non-exhaustive) list of date and time formats along with my preferences.

Format	Example	Preference
`d<Suffix> of Month, yyyy`	4th of May, 1900	Alternative
`Mth d, yyyy`	May 4, 1900	Preferred
`m/d`	5/4	Alternative
`dd.mm`	04.05	Alternative
`mm/dd/yyyy`	05/04/1900	Alternative
`dd.mm.yyyy`	04.05.1900	Preferred
`yyyy-mm-dd`	1900-05-04	Preferred

Format	Example	Preference
`h tt` `h:MM tt`	8 AM 8:30 AM	Preferred
`HH:MM`	08:00	Alternative
`HH:MM tt`	08:00 AM	Alternative
`h o'clock`	8 o’clock	Alternative
`HHmm hrs`	0800 hrs	Preferred

I use “a.m.” and “p.m.” or “am” and “pm,” or “AM” and “PM,” based on the surrounding text context.

On this website, the following date formats will be used for references:

Year: yyyy-XX-XX
Month: yyyy-mm-XX
Day: yyyy-mm-dd

The “X” represents the literal “X”. For examples, go back to ~/notes.

References & resources

IBM CMOFZ 10.1.0

Wikipedia: Date-time group