Human Temporal Measurements
Time Measurements and Date Formats
By Vexen Crabtree 2005 Aug 16
The YYYY MM DD date format is the internationally agreed concise format for unambiguous dates and is to be adopted by everyone. It is logical, with the biggest denominators being listed first (same as numbers, times, weights, etc), making it easily sortable and utterly clear. The International Organization for Standardization specification for the International Date Format is the ISO-8601 format, adopted so far by the United Nations, commerce groups, scient`ific communities and most Western governments. "2005 02 29" is an example of an ISO-8601 compliant date print.
- International Date Format (ISO 8601): Year, Month, Day
- The Babylonians Versus the French Revolution
- Use BCE and CE, not BC and AD
1. International Date Format (ISO 8601): Year, Month, Day
1.1. YYYY MM DD - Today's Date is: 2005 08 16
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard ISO-8601 (2004) specifies the international date and time convention, replacing earlier ISO-8601 standards. Local date formats such as "01/02/03" are ambiguous and inaccurate, and could mean "January 2, 2003" in the USA or "1 February 2003" in other places. The full standard runs to a heady length of 33 pages.
“How can one avoid confusion when a date like 08/04/02 has at least six different interpretations around the world? A notation like 01/02/03 could mean 1 February 2003 or 2 January 2003 or 2 March 2001. [...]Wouldn't it be wonderful if there were an internationally agreed standard? Well, there is. It is ISO 8601, Data elements and interchange formats - Information interchange - Representation of dates and times.
ISO 8601 corresponds to the UN Working Party on the Facilitation of International Trade Procedures in its Recommendation 7.”
Some advantages of adopting the International Date Format:
- It is international.
- It is clear, concise and accurate.
- It is not prone to year 2K type errors because it enforces 4-digit years.
- It follows conventions of scale where the biggest denominators come first (ie thousands, hundreds, tens, units), as they do with numbers, times (hour:minute).
- You can easily sort by date as YYYYMMDD is sorted top to bottom, left to right, the same as all other systems (unlike 01/03/04 which is hard to sort).
Across Europe the European Norm (EN) standard 28601 incorporates ISO-8601. "All members of CEN (all of Western Europe and Scandinavia, and most of Eastern Europe) are required to adopt the EN 28601 European Standard. Most have now done so" [Galpin 1998].
- UK: BS EN 28601:1992 (replaces BS 7151).
- USA: ANSI X3.30-1985(R1991) and NIST FIPS 4-1.
- www.qsl.net/g1smd/isoimp.htm lists the standards numbers of various countries and regions, for example ISO-8601 has been incorporated into DIN EN 28601 in Germany.
1.2. YYYY MMM DD - Today's Date is 2005 Aug 16
I have been using the YYYY MMM DD format since late 1999 when the Millennium Bug started to hit the news; I came up with the format independently of the International Organization for Standardization after thinking on what would make a good, universal, systematic date format that would be completely non-ambiguous. The difference (notice the third M in the middle), is that I use a 3-character English shorthand for the month, for example 2001 Jan 01. This makes it, in my mind, utterly clear what format I am (nearly) using. Once the world is largely familiar with it, the English month can be dropped. Until then, it aids the transition. A major disadvantage of this halfway format is that it is not easily sortable; the English letters when used as filenames, for example, would result in "2002 Aug 10" appearing before "2002 May 10", which is unfortunate.
2. The Babylonians Versus the French Revolution
In antiquity there have been many ways of recording the passage of time, and many ways to divide up the year into seasons and months. It the Babylonians who gave us our present concepts of temporal measurement.
“Thanks to the Babylonians, weeks have seven days corresponding to the interval between phases of the moon, and there are sixty seconds in a minute and sixty minutes in an hour. This ancient way of recording the passage of time is not perhaps the most convenient, but it has become deeply entrenched: during the French Revolution, a more rational system of ten-hour days and ten-day weeks was introduced, but it was soon abandoned.”"Science: A Four Thousand Year History" by Patricia Fara (2009)1
This moon-based and sun-based system became the basis of the Jewish and Christian calendars, and has remained in place as the world's most common system of time-telling. As Prof. Fara alludes to, however, the divisions of a year into multiples of 12 months, 4 weeks in a month, 7 days in a week, 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, and 60 seconds in an hour, is an incredibly complicated and difficult numbering system to work with.
“It was the Babylonians in their star-gazing, moon-charting enthusiasm who divided time into divisions based on the movements of the moon and sun. They divided hours and minutes into divisions of 60 because they had a base-60 numbering system. Time has moved on, and we now have an international base-10 numbering system. Our recording of time should also change; such a change would have advantages in man-mangement, physics, engineering, etc, where we'd no longer need to mix numbers from base-60 and base-10 numbering systems. A system of base-10 temporal measurements was introduced during the French Revolution, but it was abandoned in the face of almost universal terror at the thought of changing our cherished (but odd) system of dividing time.”
3. Use BCE and CE, not BC and AD
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601
CE means Common Era and is the name of the most popular dating system. The current year is 2000ce.
BCE means Before Current Era and it counts the time before CE, counting backwards. 1bce is the year before 1ce.
BC means Before Christ and is a reference to a prediction of the Christian messiah's birth date made in the second millennium. The date of Jesus Christ's birth is known to be about 4 bce, so the reference is poor. It is also being replaced for the same reason that AD is being replaced.
AD means Anno domini which means "in the year of our lord". Less than a third of the world is Christian, and expecting someone to conform to a religious convention that is not their own is immoral.
CE has the same value as AD, and BCE has the same value as BC. The reason to use the politically correct terms of CE and BCE is so that you do not assert Christian mythology onto non-Christians. When a person chooses to use "BCE" and "CE" they are showing that they do not discriminate against people on account of their religion - they are showing themselves to be considerate and moral. Using the term "BC" and "AD" shows inconsideracy for others' feelings and beliefs (unless of course they do not know the difference (like most people), which is why this page exists).
“We have received many Emails about the use of CE and BCE:”
- Some Christians are distressed at the new terms. Some feel that AD and BC have been in use for centuries and that this tradition should be respected. Others see the switch to CE and BCE as just one more example of non-Christian religions being given precedence over Christianity.
- Some Emailers, Christians and others, support the new terms. They feel bound by the Golden Rule -- to do onto others what they would wish be done to themselves. If AD and BC cause distress to others, then the Ethic of Reciprocity (of which the Golden Rule is one of many examples) would suggest that the terms be scrapped in favor of more neutral terms.
The fundamentalist Christians who think that because it is nicer to use religion-neutral terms, that "other religions are being put above Christianity" are incorrect; to use a term is not to put any religion first, which is of course the most tolerant and respectful way to proceed in a multicultural world where English is the international language.
References: (What's this?)
Crabtree, Vexen
"General Neophobia in Everyday Life: Humankind's Fear of Progress and Change" (2009). Accessed 2009 Nov 23.
Fara, Patricia
"Science: A Four Thousand Year History" (2009 Hardback). Fara has a PhD in History of Science from London University. Published by Oxford University Press.
Notes
- Fara (2009) p7, 13-14. Added to this page on 2009 Nov 23.^
- 2009 Nov 23: Added the section The Babylonians Versus the French Revolution to this page.