I have always considered the usual American way of dating things, month/day/year, to be more than a bit illogical. Personally I have always thought that it should be year/month/day. I like doing it as AD 2000 July 28th, since this removes all ambiguity, though it is only really critical when writing just 2000-07-28. (Though I have no doubt that I will get tired of writing out those extra two digits and will be reducing it to 02-07-28 in a few years time.)

It also makes more sense to put the AD first because it stands for Anno Domini, or in the year of our lord. Doesn’t it make more sense to be saying In the Year of our Lord 2000 rather than the other way around? This is also why I do not like the DD-MM-YYYY European system for dating. Since I put the AD first, where it should be, it makes sense to put the month and day afterwards. And from a logic standpoint as well, from more general to specific information.

Of course this is yet another case of my tilting at windmills. I doubt that by doing things like writing out dates 1878-10-07 is going to change many (if any) people’s mind about that correct way to write it.

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