A request: Date formats

[Legbreaker]

On behalf of all those people who aren't Americans, could we please use the Nato standard format of Day/Month/Year? For example, today would be written 18OCT12.

Makes reading and understanding posts a LOT easier....

[Snake Eyes]

Doesn't NATO use a 4-digit year?

[TrailerParkJawa]

I'm American but tend to use 15-oct-12 format because my job oftens includes working with non Americans but also cause when I was a kid I thought that made me cool. :p

[Legbreaker]

Doesn't NATO use a 4-digit year?
From wiki
In military messages and communications (e.g. on maps showing troop movements) the format is DDHHMMZ Mon YY, so for instance, "271545Z FEB 08" represents 15:45 Zulu time (which is to say UTC) on the 27th of February, 2008.
It's also in line with my military experience, not to mention most of the "documents" we see in T2K modules, etc.

[Snake Eyes]

Well, if we must have a standard, how about rather than simply using the wiki definition of a DTG (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date-time_group), we drop one step back for the non-NATO (and non-military) members of our audience and embrace the more universally accessible Wikipedia style guide for handling dates?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Dates_and_time

If you insist on using DTGs, knock yourself out. I understand the desire for consistency but two digit years have been out of favor since the run-up to Y2K, as indicated in ISO 8601 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601).

[Legbreaker]

I don't think it really matters in our case if it's 2 or 4 digit years, just as long as there's no possibility of confusing days and months.
Personally I use the 2 digit format for just about everything, and as Y2K isn't exactly relevant for T2K... ;)
Besides, 2 is easier to type than 4 for us lazier types. :D

[Snake Eyes]

Use whatever notation you want, just don't expect the rest of the world to comply with anything other than a universally accepted common standard.

DTGs have a fairly narrow and focused audience. They may be appropriate for era-accurate nostalgia, but truncated representation of date formats has been officially deprecated since 2004.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Who would have thought this could be so devisive?

Personally I'd prefer to see the month as a word rather than a number like in the following: -
5th Oct (or variations of, e.g. 5-Oct)
or
Oct 5th (or Oct 5)

The US style of Month/Day in number format throws me out every time because it's so unfamiliar in my part of the world. I certainly don't want the US to change its format to suit me but a common, recognizable format for both military & civilian forum members would be appreciated.

Two digits for the year has been out of favour since Y2k? Somebody should tell the rest of the world!
Four digits or two for the year shouldn't be a cause for confusion in this forum because the time period we generally reference is of a limited length and is very familiar to us. But I can see how it could be misconstrued so again, if a common format recognizable by all was used, I think it would be better.

But that's just me.

[B.T.]

>snip<

Personally I'd prefer to see the month as a word rather than a number like in the following: -
5th Oct (or variations of, e.g. 5-Oct)
or
Oct 5th (or Oct 5)

The US style of Month/Day in number format throws me out every time because it's so unfamiliar in my part of the world. I certainly don't want the US to change its format to suit me but a common, recognizable format for both military & civilian forum members would be appreciated.

>Snip<
But that's just me.

Same from this part of the world. I have read several postings with dates and really had to remind me, that the U.S. citizens use a different kind of naming a date.

In the future I will write the month's name as StainlessSteelCynic suggested, to make a date easily recognizable.

[simonmark6]

Do what you like, I'll be in the cold, cold ground before I recognise the Gregorian Calendar...

[Michael Lewis]

Lets forget the Gregorian calendar and adopt the calendar of Harptos! It's the calendar used in nearly all of Faerun. Except maybe those dam elves!