x7 Labs » Standards http://x7.fi Random findings by the x7 Labs team Fri, 18 Jun 2010 11:03:50 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Ambiguous dates – why can’t we just agree on standards? http://x7.fi/2009/12/03/ambiguous-dates-why-cant-we-just-agree-on-standards/ http://x7.fi/2009/12/03/ambiguous-dates-why-cant-we-just-agree-on-standards/#comments Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:24:32 +0000 Harri http://x7.fi/?p=76 Lately, I have noticed the increased use of this style in presenting dates:

Wired.com

Wired News home page

I have concluded that replacing the slashes with dots is just a typographical fad. A very confusing one. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s a standard. I’m not sure.

Being a developer and knowing how hard international date formats can be, my brain is trained to spot oddities. I can perform correct conversions back and forth based on the current context.

Unfortunately, I can’t trust my own heuristics and instincts in all cases:

date-ambiguity

"My Brain Hurts" by Koushik Dutta (Seattle, WA)

The 12.01.2009 is actually 01.12.2009, or vice versa, depending on where you live.

The site is hosted on Blogger.com. I wonder is this ambigious formatting decision made by the page author, a custom template or by Blogger, now owned by Google?

If you insist on using non-standard date formats, could you at least try to be consistent.

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