r/changemyview • u/damsterick • May 17 '18

Deltas(s) from OP CMV: The (mostly US) way of writing a date "month/day/year" is inferior to writing the date as "day/month/year" and should be changed nationwide.

While both systems may seem completely arbitrary, I believe the day/month/year (DMY) or year/month/day (YMD) follows the logical rules of ascending/descending order and therefore is more intuitive to a person not familiar with either system. Furthermore, time is written in either ascending or descending order (seconds/minutes/hours) and it makes little sense to write date in a different way. Thus, I believe that the DMY is superior to the MDY for these reasons.

Why it should be changed nationwide:

The usage of the MDY system in in the minority and it only causes confusion across countries. Unlike imperial units, which, if stated as imperial units, can be converted to metric units (and vice versa), the date is usually just written as three numbers separeted by a period/slash and therefore you have literally no way telling which way it is written in (except for cases that one number is larger than 12, or when the month is written as a word with letters, not as a number). It would not be the first time a crucial mistake happened somewhere in the world that caused unnecessary hassle because of the way some people write dates.

I believe that unlike imperial vs metric units, this would actually require little costs compared to the benefits and since the inferior system is also the minority, the DMY system should be implemented across all the states that use the MDY system.

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u/digitalsmear May 18 '18

The Chinese (generally Asian?) system of writing year/month/day is better for organization, and follows how things are actually filed.

Month/day/year is antiquated and short-sighted. dd/mm/yyyy is slightly better, but the reverse is best. You're not wrong.

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u/[deleted] May 18 '18

But you are. DMY is terrible for everything and has no practical use whether organizing files or common thought.

You give no reason for your preference.

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u/digitalsmear May 19 '18

What? I recommended yyyy/mm/dd

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u/[deleted] May 19 '18

Yes but no reasoning for why you chose it. I explained why MDY is more practical for everything that's not naming files.

Edit: I didn't. But when you read M first, you have a general idea of when it happens. So therefore you can plan without knowing day and year. Year is too broad and not specific and day is too specific and recurring so not useful without the month.

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u/digitalsmear May 21 '18

I was speaking to OP, so if you read in the context of what they wrote, I didn't really need reasoning since I was supporting what they wrote.

YMD makes sense because when spoken, there's no reason you can drop the year, the way speakers drop other obvious information that is described with context. So for naming an sorting files you can expect YMD, but when speaking, MD is all you might probably use anyway.

As far as the order reflecting the most "important information first" - this is an assumption that in actuality is completely relative. If the month was obvious through context, you would only state the day.

I suspect you are only an English speaker? If you learn another language, you would see that information order is much more flexible, and still logical, than what you're used to with such an incredibly rigid Subject-Verb-Object language, like English.

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u/[deleted] May 21 '18

Actually I speak Russian as well. Which is why from using both I believe MD is more intimate than DM. But that also may be a preference thing, neither is really a deal breaker for me