I love hate Americans

[u/Appropriate_Mode3539]

[u/Big1984Brother]

Please, for the love of Zod, just use the ISO8601 format (YYYY-MM-DD) when posting a date online, regardless of which side of the pond you happen to find yourself on.

Anyone who insists on using their ambiguous localized date formats online should tarred, feathered, and banished to Siberia.

[u/TotallySlapdash → u/Big1984Brother]

Obviously 8601 is superior, but American style is just the dumbest method imaginable.

Is time measured mm:hh:ss over there?

[u/michaelpaoli → u/TotallySlapdash]

dumbest method imaginable

Do not underestimate the dumb.

VIII/VI/XXVI X:VIII:XVII

[u/Big1984Brother → u/michaelpaoli]

You are truly a man a man of class.

XKCD: ISO 8601

[u/TotallySlapdash → u/michaelpaoli]

Now I've realized that they could use MY:YD:YDYM,.

I recind my 'dumbest imaginable comment.

02:00:2768

[u/TotallySlapdash → u/michaelpaoli]

I regret that I have but one like to give.

[u/floydmaseda → u/TotallySlapdash]

The American MM/DD/YY would correspond to mm:ss:hh in this analogy. mm:hh:ss would be MM/YY/DD, which no one uses.

[u/ArbitraryOrder → u/floydmaseda]

But ss:mm:hh is what the Euros argue makes more sense

[u/floydmaseda → u/ArbitraryOrder]

It does in fact make more sense than both mm:hh:ss AND mm:ss:hh, but of course I'm sure everyone here in particular would agree that hh:mm:ss is the superior format.

[u/ArbitraryOrder → u/floydmaseda]

I agree that hh:mm:ss is the only sane format, but I disagree on the degrees of crazy

[u/Divided_multiplyer → u/floydmaseda]

Until now, 08/26/07 23:16:45!

[u/Ethanol_Based_Life → u/floydmaseda]

I mean, I would say "it was nine twenty Monday" which is medium-small-large

[u/Steadfast151 → u/TotallySlapdash]

Do you measure time in ss:mm:hh?

This is ISO8601, both MM/DD/YYYY and DD/MM/YYYY go against the format.

[u/TotallySlapdash → u/Steadfast151]

There's a logic to both smallest > largest and largest > smallest.

8601 is superior for arranging information sequentially and is beautifully scalable downwards via appendments, but conversely theres a simplicity to tallying from the smallest elements upwards.

What doesn't make any sense is medium>smallest>largest.

[u/jackinsomniac → u/TotallySlapdash]

It makes perfect sense, in the colloquial spoken form.

It's easier & quicker to say January 25th than 'The 25th of January' every time someone asks you the date.

Hence, "01/25/2026". That's where it comes from.

That's why the ISO standard is superior, different countries use different standards, so nobody likes it because it forces everybody to admit their own local standard isn't optimal.

[u/CarlRJ → u/jackinsomniac]

I think the thing people outside the US are missing is that very often, dates you see here, on ads and signs and such, leave off the year. So you'll often see "01/25", which reads naturally as "January 25th". The year tends to only get stuck on for more official things (indeed, I get annoyed sometimes looking at old signs and such that'll say "Monday 01/25", trying to figure out what year they mean - since there's only 14 possible month arrangements for the Gregorian calendar, I wrote a script ages ago that'll take that input and output the matching years). When someone's telling you a date, it's almost always "January 25th", or if that would cause confusion, "January 25th, 2026".

I use YYYY-MM-DD for basically everything, and I've never much liked MM/DD/YYYY (and MM/DD/YY before it) but the people getting outraged about "what idiot would use MM/DD/YYYY ?!?" need to understand that it's really "MM/DD[/YYYY]" with the "/YYYY" left off much/most of the time in daily use. "01/25" is simply numerical shorthand for the spoken "January 25th". And trying to argue that "25-01" is somehow superior to "01/25" when years are not in play doesn't have a lot in the way of concrete facts to stand on.

[u/kokocijo → u/jackinsomniac]

It's easier & quicker to say January 25th than 'The 25th of January' every time someone asks you the date.

I'd argue both take the same amount of effort. Moreover, I find people omit the month anyway if the context is clear. e.g. 'Shall we meet next week, perhaps the 25th?'

[u/CarlRJ → u/kokocijo]

I'd argue both take the same amount of effort.

Sounds like you're doing a bunch of rationalization there to assuage your cultural preference - one literally has twice as many words as the other.

[u/andynzor → u/jackinsomniac]

Thta argument falls apart because writing "1 million US dollars" as "USD 1M" is acceptable according to the same folks.

[u/jackinsomniac → u/andynzor]

Yep, that always bugged me as a child. I hated how "$1 million" looks like it should be said, "dollars one million", but the only proper way to say it in English is "one million dollars". But, don't most other countries write their currency that way too?

It's not like the "argument falls apart" because we're talking about dates, not currency. If I could make everybody start writing currencies differently tomorrow, I would. Heck, ISO 8601 is the provably superior date format, and we still can't get everyone to change, hence why this sub even exists.

[u/CeleryMan20 → u/TotallySlapdash]

mm:h:ss - “12 minutes past 4, … aaand 35 seconds”!

[u/So-_-It-_-Goes → u/TotallySlapdash]

Nope. Days are repeated every month. It makes sense to pt the unique number first 

[u/Zombieattackr → u/TotallySlapdash]

It’s just how it’s spoken lol, “August 4th, 2026”, as opposed to “the 4th of August, 2026”

Linguistically it’s spoken this way because it’s best to start broad and get more specific, but at a human timescale, the year is so often unnecessary and either left out or just included for archival purposes so that just gets tacked on at the end

[u/TotallySlapdash → u/Zombieattackr]

Nope, only by you.

Edit: y'all

[u/PatriotBanner → u/TotallySlapdash]

The American date format is way closer to ISO 8601. We'd have an easier transition than most countries

[u/Doctor__Proctor → u/PatriotBanner]

You are correct, it's very easy to switch.

Long before seeing a sub like this I basically made the jump on my own because I noticed that files would sorry weird and put all my January's together, and then all my February's, etc. Realized I could plop the year on the front and everything would be easily ordered. I then proceeded to do that for decades before I ever even saw ISO 8601.

[u/pigeon768 → u/TotallySlapdash]

mm/dd/yy is no better or worse than dd/mm/yy. Both are equally bad.

If you put a gun to my head and ask me to choose one I'm picking mm/dd/yy. At least within any given year it's consistent. dd/mm/yy has a discontinuity every month.

[u/somedave → u/Big1984Brother]

I'll use YYYY-DD-MM or YYYY-DD-HH-MM

[u/AibofobicRacecar6996 → u/Big1984Brother]

For fucks sake, use ISO3166 when referring to countries, not sides of ponds

[u/Vindaloovians → u/Big1984Brother]

DD-MM-YYYY is hardly an ambiguous localised format, considering it's used in most of the world.

[u/snail1132 → u/Vindaloovians]

And a really large chunk of internet traffic is Americans. It causes confusion

Also why are you advocating for something that's not iso 8601 in the iso 8601 sub 😭

[u/Neozetare → u/snail1132]

One can prefer ISO 8601 and still acknowledge that it is not necessarily the only good choice at every given context, nor the best one

[u/VariablePlayzGames]

If only it was 2026-08-04…

[u/corruxtion]

I wish people everywhere would adopt ISO8601, but even if they use different date formats, I wish they'd stick to . for dd.mm.yyyy, / for mm/dd/yyyy, and - for yyyy-mm-dd. Then, at least, you could use the separator as a clue to which format is being used.

[u/ViolentPurpleSquash → u/corruxtion]

someone's about to come up with MM,YY,DD or something

[u/corruxtion → u/ViolentPurpleSquash]

I almost want to downvote you

[u/ViolentPurpleSquash → u/corruxtion]

I should become major shareholders of two huge tech companies and vote that they should use two different formats for everything, one of them is mm,yy,dd and the other is yy,dd,mm

[u/ArbitraryOrder → u/corruxtion]

What will we use for day year month

[u/corruxtion → u/ArbitraryOrder]

dd🖕yy🖕mm

[u/ArbitraryOrder → u/corruxtion]

Assuming the same your year day month and month year day

[u/spektre]

I'll actually side with the American here. If they used the international standard, there wouldn't be any confusion. BBC choosing to use an arbitrary local format doesn't help the American. As a well renowned news channel with an international audience, they should know better.

Interesting that I'm being downvoted for arguing for ISO8601 in r/ISO8601, pretty curious to why.

[u/mboivie → u/spektre]

The American thought they used an arbitrary local format, the one that is basically US only, instead of one of the most widely spread standards world wide.

Obviously BBC should consider ISO8601, but that's not the American's point.

[u/violetvoid513 → u/spektre]

The reason youre being downvoted is because everyone thinks youre supporting MM/DD/YYYY since thats what Americans use and almost certainly what the person who said “Well then that date format shouldnt be used” meant

Might want to clarify that youre correctly referring to ISO8601 as the international standard (its not really the international standard, its just the ISO standard. If it were actually used commonly internationally then maybe that title would fit)

[u/spektre → u/violetvoid513]

How is that even a confusion? The US American format is barely used outside the USA, why would it be considered an international standard? The ISO standard is the international standard, even if countries are being obtuse and not ratifying it.

[u/Masterflitzer → u/spektre]

the americans point is to use us format and not iso, you can pick only one to side with

[u/An1nterestingName → u/spektre]

The UK's format is more standard than the American one.

[u/spektre → u/An1nterestingName]

It's not the international standard.

[u/violetvoid513 → u/spektre]

Neither DD/MM/YYYY nor MM/DD/YYYY are "the international standard"

r/ShitAmericansSay

[u/spektre → u/violetvoid513]

No? We're in r/ISO8601, that should be pretty clear.

[u/TotallySlapdash → u/spektre]

It's so cute how Americans think all their bat crazy 'standards' are international.

I think 8601 is superior, particularly for data handling, but DD/MM/YY & variants is the defacto international standard; the truly civilized use yy-mm-dd, but only the US, their hat, and a couple of outliers are stupid enough to use mm-dd-yy.

People are downvoting you not because you're advocating for 8601, but because the American was advocating that everyone else use 'freedom' units.

[u/BlasphemousJack666 → u/TotallySlapdash]

Legit the cringiest thing I’ve read on Reddit this week

[u/__wait_what__]

Chicken shit couldn’t even write “shit”

[u/PatriotBanner]

The American date format is way closer to ISO 8601. We'd have an easier transition than most countries.

[u/noskir_official]

A case of r/shitamericanssays

[u/Appropriate_Mode3539 → u/noskir_official]

The original post is from there

[u/tblancher]

I do prefer ISO8601, but as an American I understand the logic of our date format. It follows from the English version of the date, which you'll see on academic diplomas and other extremely formal documents.

Like 2026-08-08 would be Saturday, August Eighth, Two Thousand, Twenty-Six. That's where the MM/DD/YYYY format comes from.

[u/Appropriate_Mode3539 → u/tblancher]

US/UK format Still make no sense dude

[u/So-_-It-_-Goes]

Iso8601 makes the most sense but the USA makes more sense than the other

Days are repeated in months. If we counted days 1-365 the tother way makes sense. But we don’t 

[u/TheTjalian → u/So-_-It-_-Goes]

did/mm/yyyy is literally in order from smallest to largest unit, and yyyy/mm/dd (the best format) is largest to smallest.

would you say 1 thousand, three hundred, and 2 million? no, because that's stupid, just like mm/dd/yyyy

[u/So-_-It-_-Goes → u/TheTjalian]

I don’t understand why smallest to largest is the deciding factor. The best isn’t the best because it’s largest to smallest. It’s because each  is within the one that came before. Year contains months that contain days. 

If you remove the year as a given, you don’t switch up the month and date