Talk:Date and time notation in the United States

US TV-time notation

It could be a good thing to add information about US TV time notation (for example 9/8c). 139.11.120.5 (talk) 15:43, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Characteristics

Not sure this section really comes anywhere close to meeting Wiki's stringent guidelines in terms of proper grammar, formatting or citations. That being said, it does a fair job explaining the intricacies of the way us Americans tell time which could be confusing to a foreigner, especially if they originate in a country that uses a much more strict 24-hour time. Drumz0rz (talk) 15:25, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Factually incorrect statement

Times of day from :01 to :29 minutes past the hour are commonly pronounced with the words "after" or "past", for example 10:17 being "seventeen after ten" or "seventeen past ten". :15 minutes is very commonly called "quarter after" or "quarter past" and :30 minutes universally "half past", e.g. 4:30, "half past four".

"Half past" is understood, but its usage is considered an affectation by some. Far more common in my experience as a native American English speaker is to use "thirty": 4:30 is "four-thirty," even by speakers who otherwise use "quarter to" and "quarter past" (actually, "after" is probably much more common). 108.246.205.134 (talk) 00:40, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I second that this statement is false 'and :30 minutes universally "half past", e.g., 4:30, "half past four"'. This might be true for British speakers but not US English speakers. It is universally spoken as "hour thirty" with a soft second "t" pronounced more like the "d" and rhymes with "birdy". Mrdvt92 (talk) 18:13, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

My feeling is, based on my own practice as well as others around me, that "after" and "past" are used only with "quarter" or "half"; no one I know says "17 after 10", it's always "ten seventeen". I do suspect that digital clocks and watches are having an effect on our vocalizations of time. When the only thing was analogue clocks and watches, I was more likely to round off to the nearest five minutes or even to the nearest quarter hour; now if I have a digital watch, I am more likely to say the exact time. Wschart (talk) 15:20, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

:45 minutes is pronounced as "quarter to", "quarter until", or "quarter till". For example, "9:45 a.m." is often pronounced "fifteen till ten" or "quarter to ten", or sometimes "quarter to ten in the morning".

I have never heard "fifteen till ten" in American English, though "quarter to" is very common. Are there regions where this is said? Hi2024 (talk) 11:16, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Needs information on timezone

US times are usually (of necessity) followed by a timezone, unless you are communicating with someone in the same timezone. There also needs to be a clarification of the difference between PDT, PST and PT etc. (same for the other three timezones) -- is PT just a shorthand for "either PDT or PST, whichever is current"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2620:0:1000:147C:2D10:E88B:D108:91C3 (talk) 20:22, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Why?

This is interesting, but does anybody know why the United States is almost unique in using the MM/DD/YYYY system?

185.47.200.121 (talk) 17:31, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

This is only complete speculation on my part, but it may have to do with agriculture and the planting seasons. Having the month first would be immediately evident to someone in the agriculture field as to what season was associated with that month, and what activities would be going on ag-wise. This line of reasoning does seem to affect other manifestations of time in the US, especially "Daylight Savings Time" which purportedly was first initiated so that farmers would have more daylight to work with during harvest season. 108.26.120.34 (talk) 15:46, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Hmm. But the UK, etc., also have agriculture and seasons, so that doesn't seem like an explanation. I would suggest, rather, that the MM/DD/YYYY formatting is due to the spoken shift from "the 17th [day] of June" to "June 17[th]", over the last few centuries in North America. Some people still prefer the former (minus the "day" part), but they are mostly elderly or rural; the style is sometimes also still used in highly formal contexts like wedding invitations and (sometimes still with the "day" part) legal documents in the US. The same kind of shortening shift occurred in the UK (and many other places), but to "17th June" (though many British speakers still prefer "the 17th of June"). People would naturally write it the way they say it, and the abbreviated forms naturally follow from the longer written versions, preserving their order. It's not clear why the order ever changed in the US, though there's some tantalizing info that suggests a hypothesis.

N-gram data shows that "August 12" and "12th of August" date formats were both co-dominant over other approaches in American printing shortly after the American Revolution, and the "August 12" format became dominant about a generation after the end of the American Civil War. The "August 12th" style has had its adherents but has always been a minor usage, though above various alternatives like "August twelfth", "12th August", etc. The internationalized "12 August" format has been on the rise in American publishing, since around 1970, but has not overtaken "August 12" style and seems to be running parallel with it (though Google Ngram data is not reliable after about 1990 due to fewer works from those years being in the corpus; the US- and UK-specific data only goes up to 2009 at all) Some sample N-grams: [1], [2], [3], [4].

There is some, but inconclusive and inconsistent, evidence of a minor spike in "August 12" style and decline in "12th of August" style in the US around 1830 (amusingly, it's the August 18 N-gram that provides the contradictory data). This would coincide with wide availability and adoption of Noah Webster's 1828 An American Dictionary of the English Language, which was a political as much as linguistic work. It sparked a nationwide and purposeful trend of adopting usage that differed from then-current perception of British style. Webster actually created usage patterns that were not in evidence before his dictionary, by selecting a particular option from the available variations on something and declaring it "American", with readers adapting to it despite their former preferences out of a sense of patriotism and peer pressure. The Civil War interrupted that wave of nationalistic consistency. I anecdotally know that the "12th of August" style is still used with more frequency in the American South (i.e. the former Confederate States of America) than in the north or the later-developed far west, and this is consistent with various other linguistic splits that seem to have been deepened by the Civil War. But, that still doesn't answer the question of why "August 12" was already common by late 18th century.

The thing is, "August 12" was also common in British English – more so than any other format, from about 1870 onward (around the same time it became ascendant in America) – and was not overtaken by "12 August" style in the UK until some time in the 1950–1970 span, probably closer to the earlier end of the range (and a little before an increase in this style in the US): [5], [6], [7], [8]. "12 August" really is that recent as a major style in English. Someone who knows British standards history can probably ID when and why that happened (and there are still lots of people alive today who were alive then). It might help to look at old editions of style guides like Hart's Rules and The Chicago Manual of Style, if someone really wanted to research this on either or both sides of the Atlantic.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  01:51, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Regardless of WHY the US is different, it is an almighty nuisance to the rest of the world. As Canadians, we have had US officials tell us our passport is out of date, that our Alberta Motor Association card is not valid, that our credit card has expired. Americans can't seem to understand that other countries do NOT use their date system. We did manage to persuade the AMA to switch to YYYY MMM DD on their cards. We so much look forward to the time when we all use the ISO standard YYYY/MM/DD, which is so much clearer.Graywriter (talk) 19:28, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

And yet, though my Alberta driver's licence is DD/MMM/YYYY, my Manitoba birth certificate is MMM/DD/YYYY, so there's not necessarily consistency even within Canada or from province to province. Having lived all of my 40 years of life in Canada, the USA-style date notation has been the most common form I've seen used (or used myself), probably owing to our proximity to the US, and as our largest trading partner it would have been prudent for businesses to have a common system to facilitate trade. Having said that I do agree, the ISO standard would eliminate any ambiguities and I think most people in both nations would be fine with that. CanuckGod (talk) 19:08, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

: vs . and pm vs p.m.

In the UK, we only use a full stop (period) as a separator for 12-hour time (eg 7.30pm), and often use it for 24-hour also (eg 19.30). See Date and time notation in the United Kingdom. Does the US adopt this same convention, or is is always a colon (eg 7:30pm). I also notice the article tends to say 'a.m.' and 'p.m.' rather than 'am' and 'pm' - in the UK, we don't use full stops for abbreviations very often, and certainly not for initials. Do you always have full stops for initials in am and pm, or is it an option to write it without? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sb2001 (talk • contribs) 00:29, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

I am a Brit who moved to the US, so am particularly aware of the differences in time notation. In answer to your questions: full stops (or full points or full periods, depending on your preference) are frequently used in lieu of colons to distinguish between hour and minutes (eg see this timetable). Secondly, it's perfectly acceptable to write 'am' or 'a.m.' – in addition, many places just use an 'a' or 'p' (e.g. '3.42p'). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anon-e-moose (talk • contribs) 02:04, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

The "pm" style is frequent in the US, especially in tabular material (bus timetables, etc.), versus prose paragraphs. Do we really need to cover "p" in place of "p.m."? Is that hyper-abbreviation actually recommended in any reliable sources on writing? Using "." as a divider in American time format is quite uncommon, probably too uncommon to get into unless it is advocated by a source that isn't some internal house stylesheet, or unless someone has written (in a reputable publication) about this particular usage in the American context. It's not encyclopedic to try to shoe-horn every known variation into this article.

See the sourcing I did recently at Date and time notation in the United Kingdom for how to go about adding details – tie the information directly to citations of major publishers' style guides and usage dictionaries; distinguish between registers of usage (e.g. academic, news style, etc.); avoid unsourced assertions of commonness, rarity, universality, and the like. Just follow the sources. If it's not in a style guide, we don't need to cover it here. And it's absolutely not our job to cherry-pick sources or act as advocates of a particular style/format being "correct" or "better" or "the American way". We have to especially resist the nationalistic urge; in language, it is frequently factually wrong. Unfortunately, several style guides make all kinds of unscientific nationalistic assertions (this includes Chicago Manual of Style, Garner's, Fowler's, and New Hart's, among others). These should not be uncritically repeated; if other style guides clearly demonstrate that a nationalistic claim is false, then it is demonstrated false. A key WP principle is that we cannot include known-false information in Wikipedia's voice just because an otherwise credible source makes the claim, even if it is oft-repeated. We need to be linguistically descriptive not prescriptive in articles.

Both "p.m." and "pm" styles are common in the US, the latter mostly in news style (a pattern also found in the UK). You'll also see "PM" sometimes – more in the US than the UK – owing to the general rule of thumb that either an abbreviation is lower-case with dots (e.g., approx., abbrev., a.k.a.), or it's upper-case without them (DNA, EKG, AKA). Ambiguous styles common in British journalism, like "eg, ie, aka" and "Nasa, Aids, Nato", are barely attested at all in professionally published American output.

There's apt to be less time-formatting variation in the US in sufficient volume to be noteworthy, because there are fewer style guides, especially in journalism. Most news publishers follow the AP Stylebook in the US, and those that do not, like The New York Times, don't diverge much from it on such matters, nor do the US news publishers split much from the more academic Chicago Manual of Style on date and time (though they do on many other matters, like capitalization conventions, use of dashes, etc.). Style in British publishing is much more diverse. Oxford University Press alone publishes multiple style guides that often contradict each other, and each major British newspaper has its own stylebook, with innumerable conflicts between them even on various basic matters. Any "the British style is" or "in British English" claim is very likely to be false, and similar blanket claims about American usage quite frequently are. At best they are usually original research, of the form "A style guide I like says X, and it's American, ergo the American English style is X."  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  09:33, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

The comma after the year

Wikipedia's Manual of Style says there must always be a comma after the year in US-style dates, e.g. June 24, 2017, unless some other punctuation is required. This rule is flouted many, many, many times on WP, and elsewhere. It seems correct, though, as the compulsory first comma (although it's not apparently 100% compulsory---one may also see June 24 2010) makes the year into a kind of miniparenthesis, somewhat like June 24 (2017). So I'm happy to correct it, and add the comma after the year. Usually. Any comments? Rothorpe (talk) 02:44, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Other style guides agree on this. It is a parenthetical, and the commas come in pairs, just as they do in "I live in Seattle, Washington, despite all the rain", "I really dug Sammy Davis, Jr., in Porgy and Bess", and "My sister, who lives in Georgia, is pregnant". There are a lot of people who drop the second comma, but style guides do not agree with them, and good writers do not do it.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:23, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

abbreviated month

I think it would be useful to mention the IMHO quite common format Mmm. DD, YYYY (and in particular the use of a dot after Mmm, in contrast to the format DD-Mmm-YYYY). Since I'm not a native speaker, I don't dare to make an edit in that sense, but would appreciate if s/o did (or made a different clarifying statement regarding this). — MFH:Talk 15:02, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

The "Month Date, Year" order is the standard order in American dates, which is already mentioned in the article. As for the usage of a period after an abbreviated month name (such as "Jan." for "January") that is just the standard American usage of a period at the end of any abbreviation. --Khajidha (talk) 15:14, 30 April 2018 (UTC)

Ambiguous date formats?

According to the article has the format in mm/dd/yyyy (Example 08/26/2006) is permitted in this article.

According to MOS:DATEFORMAT, requires non-ambiguous date formats, all numeric formats other than YYYY-MM-DD must be avoided.

--2605:A000:1103:5C2:D8AC:D266:32A4:BD1E (talk) 23:37, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Obviously articles about data formats cannot be expected to follow the house style for date formats, since it is necessary to discuss date formats that are not accepted within the house style. See WP:IAR, which, among other things, eliminates the need to codify obvious exceptions to guidelines. Jc3s5h (talk) 23:49, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

As of 2021-10-23 this article says, "When filling in the Form I-94 cards and new customs declaration cards used for people entering the U.S., passengers are requested to write pertinent dates in the numeric "dd mm yy" format (e.g. "19 07 42"). ... The United States military uses the DD MM YYYY format for standard military correspondence. The common month-day-year format is used for correspondence with civilians." However, the infobox shows both mm/dd/YYYY and the ISO 8601 standard YYYY-MM-DD. The infobox should match the text -- and the common practice that I think I've seen living most of my life in the US. Accordingly, I'm changing it, so the infobox reflects the existing ambiguity commonly found in the US. DavidMCEddy (talk) 17:00, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Incorrect Infobox

The Infobox at the top of the page contains incorrect information. Statistical evidence for the most common formats has been difficult for me to find, but according to what I have found and my own anecdotal evidence, the most popular all-numeric date formats in the US have been m/d/yy and m/d/yyyy, where

• m represents a one-digit month for January through September and a two-digit month for October through December,
• d represents a one-digit day of month for the first nine days and a two-digit day of month for the rest,
• yy represents a two-digit year,
• and yyyy represents a four-digit year.

Neither of these formats are displayed in the Infobox. Instead, the format mm/dd/yyyy is shown, where

• mm is a two-digit month, with a preceding zero if necessary
• and dd is a two-digit year, with a preceding zero if necessary.

From what little information I could find on editing Infoboxes, I have discovered the Infobox used at the top of this page is not intended to be used directly on the article but instead used to hold metadata for other Infoboxes. Since there is no better Infobox template, we must use this one or none at all (unless someone knows how to create a new template). Furthermore, it appears the date format cannot be modified from two-digit to one-digit month and day of month. Perhaps User:AndrewNJ, who added the Infobox on October 30, 2018, knows how to modify the Infobox accordingly.

We have three options, assuming the Infobox cannot be modified to display the appropriate format:

1. Leave the Infobox as-is, including the incorrect information.
2. Remove the incorrect information from the Infobox, thereby leaving it incomplete.
3. Remove the Infobox entirely.

My vote is for Option #3. I welcome others' opinions.
~ JDCAce (talk) 02:55, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

References

Overreliance on the Chicago Manual of Style

The Chicago Manual of Style is mentioned explicitly twice in the article body, while 5 out of 11 references cite that style guide. In comparison, MLA Handbook appears once but is not used in any references, and no other styles guides, such as AP Stylebook and The Elements of Style, are even mentioned. This gives the article the false impression The Chicago Manual of Style is the de facto resource for American date and time formats. I recommend adding information from other style guides to show more neutrality.

As an aside, The Chicago Manual of Style reference links take me to a page that requires account credentials. Does Wikipedia have a policy regarding that?
~ JDCAce (talk) 03:18, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

WP:PAYWALL indicates reliable sources that require payment are acceptable references in articles. This isn't an article; I'm not aware of any policy of the kind you mention that applies to Wikipedia: space. I don't think AP Stylebook is the best choice for an encyclopedia; it tends to place more emphasis on saving space than encyclopedias in general, or Wikipedia, do. Jc3s5h (talk) 11:43, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for that info on WP:PAYWALL. I'm still learning the ropes of editing more than just small grammatical errors. I suppose because of my inexperience, I don't understand what you mean by "This isn't an article." I was able to find what "Wikipedia: space" refers to, and the same page defines what an article is and is not. From what I can tell, the Date and time notation in the United States page appears to be an article and is not part of the Wikipedia namespace, which means it falls under the WP:Paywall policy, correct? If so, I'm not sure why you brought up the Wikipedia namespace. ~ JDCAce (talk) 03:28, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, I was mixed up with a guideline I had been reading about how to represent things in Wikipedia. I think the sources were chosen to demonstrate that certain notations were used in different ways by major reliable sources, so it would be unsafe to assume that certain notations have only one meaning when they really could have two or more. For example, "midnight Monday" could mean the time midway between 11:59 PM Sunday and 12:01 AM Monday, or it could mean the time midway between 11:59 PM Monday and 12:01 AM Tuesday. There would be little point in "piling on" more sources in favor of one notation or another. It suffices to show certain notations are ambiguous. Jc3s5h (talk) 12:11, 14 June 2021 (UTC)