Date convention
 

Guys:

When mentioning a date, let's all use the convention like 20-Aug-05 rather than 05-08-05. With people from all over the world coming to this site, that last reference could be August 5th or May 8th.

Thanks

Re: Date convention
 

Hi John,

Devil's advocate here. How about a YY-MM-DD convention?

For example: 45-05-08.

I utilize this format in my databases. It makes for easy sorting and is, I think, unambiguous.

Best regards,

Steve Sheflin

Re: Date convention
 

Hi,

This might seem like pure trivia, but I asure you it is not. The EU has - for good reasons - decided to use the YY-MM-DD format. If you tabulate data (word or exel spread-sheet) and part of it is the date, you might want to sort cronologically. Unless the above format is used you'll get complete rubbish, like 05 SEP 1944 after 04 FEB 2005. So lets stick to the computer logic format.
bregds
SES

Re: Date convention
 

The points about using a format to suit a database are well taken (as I eventually learned when working on a book that was stored as about 250 files named for dates!)

However, when talking about the Luftwaffe, I think there's an argument for using the format they normally used: DD MM YY. We Europeans understand it at least!

Re: Date convention
 

There are several date conventions that are valid depending where you live and work. It is really a hassle to switch from one convention that you use most of the time to another, just for a single specific purpose (i.e. TOCH) and it leads to errors. What I suggest is use whatever convention you are familiar with, except insert three charater alpha abreviations for the month, that pretty well eliminates the confusion factor.

As for data bases and spreadsheets, I personally use three fields for dates, this lets me insert multiple day, day-night, seasons, early, late, or months without days. Otherwise programs tend to convert dates to data sets somewhat innaccurately.

Best regards

Artie Bob

Re: Date convention
 

Oh, all the mess is done by Americans with their reversed month/day system. Anybody else uses it?

Re: Date convention
 

I think what John says makes sense, there is no ambiguity with 20-Aug-05, everyone understands it.

The format you then wish to use on your own database is entirely up to you, ie DD-MM-YY for Europeans and MM-DD-YY for Americans, which ever you find easier to use.

Regards

Andy Fletcher

Re: Date convention
 

I agree that numerical dates can cause confusion. Here in the UK '9/11/2001' means 9th November...

Using abbreviations for months (such as Aug) prevents that, but it is language-specific, which numbers are not.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

Re: Date convention
 

I use the date format suggested by John with my db files. No problems whatsoever sorting. That may depend upon the date setting one uses in Windows, but Access handles it just fine.

Re: Date convention
 

Like Jim P I have never had any problem sorting dates with access provided they are entered as dates (the data field set to date) and not entered as plain text which does create problems when filtering and sorting.

Also when the date is entered as a date (and not a text string) then you can adjust the date format to whatever you like and it automatically updates the format of every date in the field.

Regards

Andy Fletcher

Re: Date convention
 

I think the databases or Excel-like softwares have no problems with date format but the confusion exist on boards like ours, where people from various countries use different date format in their queries (or answers).

On this forum using something like '21-Aug-42' seems a good idea to me and I used it for more than a year. As everybody on this forum uses english, it should not be too difficult for us to translate the month.

Re: Date convention
 

Ahem, Americans insist on instilling democracy where it is not wanted. Perhaps we should check for how many of the participants, the reversed system is a standard and only then to make a democratic decision.

Re: Date convention
 

Franek, Ahem......

Shut Up!

Re: Date convention
 

A quote from:

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html

Christer

Re: Date convention
 

Franek:

The multitude of Polish-Americans are very comfortable using the "American System". In fact many of them intentionallly came here to take advanbtage of it and the other benefits that we have to offer.

Re: Date convention
 

Seems we've had this discussion before.

The one suggestion left out of here so far is using the decimal convention, i.e., 5.8.44 = 5 Aug. 1944. Up until recently, I'd never seen someone use this in the U.S. and the person that did I think was just trying to be fancy for effect. As far as I know, the only interpretation for this is as I've shown. The other two standard numerical conventions, 5/8/44 and 05-08-44 can be construed either way.

There is something to be said for the 44-08-05 convention, but it really is an artifact of the computer age. Certainly, you'll find no WW II German document using it, but you will either see the decimal convention or an unambiguous alpha-numeric convention. We may want to stick with one or both of these to be consistent with what we are studying. I tend to use the decimal convention which, incidentally, takes up less space than the alpha-numeric. And, if we are translating a sentence into English, it would make it completely untenable, at least in my mind, to be mixing in a computer-age convention in a WW II document.

Regards,
Richard

Re: Date convention
 

Interesting discussion and good points. However, my post was not an attempt to resolve the "one correct way" to express dates, but simply a convention that everyone who visits the site could understand.

Regardless of any international stand(s), countries who are trying to culturally take over the world, etc., and what WWII documents show, my point is that with all these possible variations coming in, from new and old visitors alike, it would be much clearer if we all used an alpha-numeric convention. Including the month with the numbers makes it chrystal clear what the month is. So, make it XX-Aug-XX, Aug-XX-XX or XXXX-Aug-XX, but include the month as alpha. This is clear.
Can we all not agree on at least that?

Re: Date Data
 

It appears this thread has lost it’s direction. The real issue is for entries on this thread, how can ambiguities be avoided? Personally, having entered 20 to 30 thousand dates (not nearly as many as Jim P.) ,most of them from copies of primary level source material, I use the dd.mm.yy convention which was used on the original documens. My personal reason for doing this is to reduce errors in data entry, as any time you begin to manipulate data, the probability of error increases. Even taking considerable care, I am constantly editing and correcting data I have entered.



As stated in my previous post on this thread, to assure clarity, all you need to do is use an English three alpha abbreviation (this is an English language board) for the month. Then no matter what sequence convention you use, the data can be interpreted correctly. This is really the only answer needed to solve the problem for the TOCH board.



If you are involved in large scale data entry, the following may be of interest. My data base was started about 15 years ago and represents somewhere between 5 and 10 thousand hours of data entry. I intimated, that when doing data entry from primary sources, several situations arise which cannot be handled by using date formats built into spreadsheets and data bases.

First is the entry for nighttime missions where two dates are spanned. Second, is the incomplete date with either a year only, the year and month, or there is unreadable data in one of the parameters. Third is the identification of a time period by season. If you wish to sort entries chronologically with this type data, it cannot be done using the standard formats (if someone has a simple answer to this problem, please let me know or post it on this board). At best if you enter mm.yy or yy.mm the program will add a default valiue for the day. What this really means is the date information is stored as a single numeric value for saving space and calculations. The basic system is inherently very difficult to modify.

Another related problem is conversion errors between formats. When converting from one format to another the program would subtract 4 years and a day which so far, I have not put together a routine to correct without using manual entry. I have several hundred hours invested in correcting this problem so far.



For all the arguments and comments in this thread, as far as I know, only Jim P. is really involved in the large data entry issue. If you are talking data entry and not doing it, you probably don’t really understand some of the problems.



Best regards,



Artie Bob

Re: Date convention
 

Hi,
The next thing is, that the English will have all members of this board drive in the left side of the road. ;) ISO standards were made for a multitude of good reasons. Why don't we also stick to them, or should we also go back to Mcs instead of Mhz? :) The US way is confusing. Either DD MMM YYYY, which afterall was good military practice for a long time, or the ISO standard.
bregds
SES

Re: Date convention
 

Has anyone noticed that the board itself is set to the "American System", so do we use the boards dating when referring to a post and the D/M/Y when referring to a historical event.

I agree with John Beaman that confusion will be eliminated with an alpha/numeric dating.

It may not be the most convenient for data entry, but, perhaps, actually only a few of the visitors and participants are actively doing data entry.