Date and time notation

Date and time notation around the world varies. Countries have adopted differing standards, software maker use different standards, people in daily life use different standards.

An approach to harmonise the different notations is the ISO 8601. (See also ISO 8601 usage)

Since the internet is a main enabler of communication between people with different date notation background, and software is used to facilitate the communication, RFC standards and W3C tips and discussion paper were published.

• RFC 822 "Standard for the Format of Arpa Internet Text Messages"
  • published 1982-08-13
  • e.g. used for email
  • format: [day ,] 20 Jun 82 14:01:17
• RFC 2445 "Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification"
  • format: 19960401T235959Z
• RFC 3339 "Date and Time on the Internet: Timestamps"
  • published July 2002
  • intended use: new internet protocols
  • format: 1982-06-20
• W3C Tip "Use international date format (ISO)" - a tip that is not followed by the W3C itself. The W3C uses lots of different formats on their websites.

Websoftware

As of 2007 a lot of widespread software that is used to create webpages uses different date formats and only a few is configurable. Configurability would allow webmasters to run websites with only one kind of time notation.

name	default format	configurable	ISO 8601 possible	producer site
Bugzilla	*2006-04-08 15:52 PDT	?	?	2007 Apr 10
GNU Mailman / pipermail	*2007-April	no	no	*10 Apr *10-Apr-2007 *Apr 10, 2007
Mediawiki	*15:52, 8 April 2007 *15:52, 8 April 2007 (UTC) [signature]	yes	partially	*2007-04-08 *15:52, 8 April 2007 *2007/04/10 [1]
phpBB	?	*Sun Apr 08, 2007 3:52 pm	?	*Apr 10, 2007 *2007-04-10 *Sun Apr 08, 2007 3:52 pm
plone	?	?	?	*Apr 10, 2007
trac	various	?	?
Typo3	?	?	?	*Sun, 08 Apr 2007 15:52:00 *8 April 2007
wordpress

Top 10 Websites

The top 10 websites of the world, as measured by Alexa also use different date formats [2], sometimes within their own site:

1. yahoo.com Apr 8, 2007; 3:52 p.m.; Sun Apr 8, 3:52 PM ET
2. msn.com Sunday, April 08, 2007
3. google.com 8 Apr 2007; Apr 8, 2007
4. youtube.com April 08, 2007
5. myspace.com Sun 04/08
6. live.com 4/8/2007; 4/8/2007 3:52 PM
7. baidu.com 2007-4-8
8. orkut.com 8-April 2007
9. qq.com 8月4日腾讯公布2007年第四季度及全年业绩 April 8, 2007
10. yahoo.co.jp ?

See also

• Date and time notation by country