What's the correct way to write the date?

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Following on from some recent discussion in the Sunrise thread, I’ll just leave this here:

https://services.anu.edu.au/marketing-outreach/storytelling-writing/writing-style-guide#D

runs

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Thank you. :grinning:

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So the ANU at the benchmark for all date related everything in Australia? Why do they bother teaching st, nd, rd, & th in primary school if they are never going to be used?

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It’s not just the ANU, it is standard across all reputable sources in Australia (which was my original point). We teach -st, -nd, -th, etc. as they are ordinal numbers, and are still used in everyday written language, e.g. when you say you came 1st in a race. However, they no longer apply to the written form of the date.

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screw the lot of you, today’s correct date is 1/24/16

:stuck_out_tongue:

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:wink:lol

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When in doubt 2016 01 24

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Isn’t it just personal preference???

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Yep! :sunglasses:

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There is an official Style manual for Australia. It provides “detailed information and recommendations on the best practices in design, editing, production and writing.”

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:+1::+1::+1:

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Yup, not available online though.

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I make a point of pronouncing the long form date as something like “Sunday twenty-fourth January twenty-sixteen” so that Sunday 24th January 2016 is assured of being the correct way to write it.

Mostly to avoid using the US date format even in speech (so not saying “January twenty-fourth”), but also to avoid the issue of saying an unwritten ‘of’.

It would feel wrong to me to drop the ordinals from that though.

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Feb 1

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If you go to that government site and then the dates and events link, and scroll through, they use the correct form of the date. e.g. 24 January 2016. You can also check Monash University, Qld Govt publications, and many other sources, it’s all the same. Thanks Ryan for clearing this up. I was pushing it uphill in the Sunrise forum. They wouldn’t believe me that there is a ‘correct’ way to write the date; they thought it was just my opinion.

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:athletic_shoe:runs off really fast :athletic_shoe: “Wait for me Ryan!”

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I personally will harass anyone, online and in real life, if they even dare to pronounce the date in a way different from mine.

I carry a taser especially for these situations.

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