International Date Format
ISO-8601

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, scientific communities and most Western governments. "2005 02 29" is an example of an ISO-8601 compliant date print.

1. International Date Format: Year, Month, Day

1.1. Todays 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.. This notation bridges the various non-standard dating formats used by nations by standardizing notation as YYYY MM DD (Year, Month, Day, for example 2005 08 16). Informal, local date format 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 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.”

ISO Article on International Date Format

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

• It follows conventions of scale where the biggest numbers come first (ie thousands, hundreds, tens, units), where the largest units come first (as they should), like hour:minute or stones:pounds, bringing our date format out of the dark ages and into line with modern logical thinking

• 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)

• Eventually everyone will use it - the UN, EU, European Norm standards, ANSI standards, etc.

Across Europe the European Norm standard EN 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

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. BCE and CE, not BC and AD

Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia, includes notes on how the standard transition from BCE to CE is made according to ISO-8601 international standards. [URL: 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 4BCE, so the reference is poor. It is also being replaced for the same reason that AD is being replaced.

AD means Ad 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. [...] When a person uses the term "BCE" or "CE" they are showing that they do not care which religion people are - they are showing themselves to be considerate and moral.”

Vexen Crabtree: Date Terminology, 2000 Jan

Sources:

Galpin, Ian
URL: www.qsl.net/g1smd/isoimp.htm Compiled in 1998. Accessed 2005 Aug 16.

International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
URL: www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-services/popstds/datesandtime.html accessed 2005 Aug 15

© 2005 Vexen Crabtree. All rights reserved.