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 !

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