In order to avoid confusion … the International Standards Organization (ISO) published International Standard ISO 8601 over 20 years ago. It has since been revised many times, but the current version is …
ISO 8601 : 2004
Data Elements & Interchange Formats – Information Interchange – Representation of Dates & Times
This was ‘adopted’ by CEN (Comité Européen de Normalisation) as European Standard/Norm … EN 28601 … which later became EN ISO 8601.
And, under CEN Rules … it has been ‘transposed’ as the National Standard in the CEN Member Countries … for example …
I.S. EN 28601 – Ireland ;
BS EN 28601 – Great Britain ;
NF EN 28601 – France ;
UNI EN 28601 – Italy ;
CSN EN 28601 – Czech Republic.
The Standard Short Format for writing any date in the Gregorian Calendar is …
Year – Month – Day
Today is … 2009-03-07 … and there can be no confusion !
.
.
END
I’ve always written the date DAY/MONTH/YEAR – what’s wrong with that? 🙂
Tom,
Globalization is not just an economic concept … it is a social reality in the 21st Century.
In Ireland, 30 years ago, you could have been sure that 11/3/2009 was today’s date. But, certainly not any more.
TODAY is 2009-03-11 !