{"id":16,"date":"2014-08-27T20:57:27","date_gmt":"2014-08-28T00:57:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/expectedly.org\/inclusivetech\/?p=16"},"modified":"2015-09-16T20:52:41","modified_gmt":"2015-09-17T00:52:41","slug":"date-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/expectedly.org\/inclusivetech\/date-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Use flexible date and time formats and avoid confusing users"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>(updated 16 Sep 2015 &#8211; information about LinkedIn and date formatting issues)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Some developers will hard-code the date and time format in their software. Sometimes this only applies to their English-language interfaces, but sometimes it extends further, which is even more thoughtless. Many American and anglophone Canadian developers tend to impose the \u2018Month\/Day\/Year\u2019 date format on everyone, regardless of what is popular elsewhere. <strong>Do not hard-code date and time formats<\/strong>. Either let the user choose it (like Wikipedia) or detect it from the user\u2019s computer settings (like Github).<\/p>\n<p>There are <strong>three date formats<\/strong>, listed in approximate order of popularity:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Day\/month\/year<\/em> &#8211; Long form: 21(st) January 2015 Short form: 21.01.2015 (most popular in Europe, Central America, non-English-speaking North America, South America, Africa and Western Asia, and used in a military context in the USA). Please note that commas are not used in this date format.<\/li>\n<li><em>Year\/month\/day &#8211;<\/em> Long form: 2015 January 21 Short form: 2015-01-21 (the ISO standard, most popular in East Asia, also used as a standard date format when sorting dates in computing)<\/li>\n<li><em>Month\/day\/year<\/em> &#8211; Long form: January 21(st), 2015 Short form: 01\/21\/2015 (popular in anglophone North America, particularly the USA; you may see the month\/day\/year format written in long form by other English-speakers, but not the confusing short form)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Of these three date formats, <strong>Day\/Month\/Year is the most popular<\/strong>. If you asked North American software developers, you\u2019d think it would be Month\/Day\/Year, even though this date format is only used on a widespread basis in the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Date_format_by_country\">USA, by some people in English-speaking Canada and Belize<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The Month\/Day\/Year format can be confusing when written in short form, especially with a date like 03\/04\/2014 &#8211; are you referring to 3 April, or 4 March?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Avoid using numerical dates<\/strong>, where most date-format confusions happen. 10\/09\/2004 can be 10 September 2004 or 9 October 2004. Write the month name out or abbreviate it using words, not numbers. \u201810 Sep 2004\u2019 and \u2018Sep 10 2004\u2019 are unambiguous, unlike 10\/09\/04 and 09\/10\/04. You&#8217;ll also want to write the year out to avoid confusion. Christopher Heng has an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thesitewizard.com\/webdesign\/date-format-international.shtml\">excellent article<\/a> about avoiding numerical dates on The Site Wizard if you&#8217;d like to read more.<\/p>\n<p>Dropbox, a popular cloud-storage provider based in San Francisco, had a hard-coded Month\/Day\/Year date format (written <em>numerically<\/em>, to add to the confusion) on the English-language version until the <em>end of 2013<\/em>, after <a href=\"http:\/\/odedran.wordpress.com\/2012\/06\/16\/why-doesnt-dropbox-support-dd-mm-yy-non-us-date-format\/\">years of complaints<\/a> from their international user base. <a href=\"https:\/\/discussion.evernote.com\/topic\/10037-request-more-date-formats\/page-2\">Evernote<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/support.mozilla.org\/en-US\/questions\/973830\">Firefox OS<\/a> are currently the subject of similar complaints. There is a <a href=\"https:\/\/kace.uservoice.com\/forums\/82699-k1000\/suggestions\/3838353-multiple-english-date-time-formats\">two-year-old thread<\/a> from Dell users complaining about one of their products having a hard-coded M\/D\/Y date format if their language is set to English. It should not take five years for a website with an international user base to support date formats understandable by a wide variety of people. <a href=\"https:\/\/community.linkedin.com\/questions\/75393\/how-do-i-change-the-us-date-format-to-non-us-date.html\">People on LinkedIn<\/a> have been complaining about a default, unchangeable US date format (written numerically on certain parts of the site) for the last two years, with no change in sight. If I am able to change the date format from M\/D\/Y to D\/M\/Y on a cheap mobile phone, then I should be able to do it with a smartphone UI or a web app.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/expectedly.org\/inclusivetech\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Capture-d\u2019e\u0301cran-2015-07-01-a\u0300-23.55.21.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-164\" src=\"http:\/\/expectedly.org\/inclusivetech\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Capture-d\u2019e\u0301cran-2015-07-01-a\u0300-23.55.21-300x181.png\" alt=\"A screenshot showing some OS X System Updates on Apple's website. All the dates are written in a numerical Month Day Year format.\" width=\"300\" height=\"181\" srcset=\"https:\/\/expectedly.org\/inclusivetech\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Capture-d\u2019e\u0301cran-2015-07-01-a\u0300-23.55.21-300x181.png 300w, https:\/\/expectedly.org\/inclusivetech\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Capture-d\u2019e\u0301cran-2015-07-01-a\u0300-23.55.21-1024x618.png 1024w, https:\/\/expectedly.org\/inclusivetech\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Capture-d\u2019e\u0301cran-2015-07-01-a\u0300-23.55.21.png 1452w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>What not to do: Apple&#8217;s support website shows numerical Month\/Day\/Year dates for updates, even if you have a region chosen that should change the way dates appear. The first three dates could be ambiguous, especially at the end of the year. I tried this list of updates with both the US and UK localisations of the Apple sites and the date formats didn&#8217;t change.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Date separators can also use different punctuation<\/strong> \u2013 in English-speaking countries, there are a variety of different date separators, depending on region (the commonest are the slash\/stroke and the full stop\/period), but in German-speaking countries, people use the full stop.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Give the option for 24-hour time (0:00 to 23:59) and 12-hour time (12:00am to 11:59pm)<\/strong>. Most non-English-speaking countries don&#8217;t use 12-hour time, and there are many English-speakers who prefer 24-hour time in user interfaces (it&#8217;s the standard in UK English regional settings on OS X, Windows and iOS).<\/p>\n<p><em>Examples of date format flexibility<\/em>: Windows allows the user to choose any date order they like, even when using English (US) as their region format.<\/p>\n<p><em>Examples of date format inflexibility<\/em>: English-language OS X and iOS will only allow you to put the day in front of the month if you\u2019re using a region format other than US or Canada. I ended up changing my region format to UK to get my preferred date order &#8211; I hate month\/day\/year.<\/p>\n<p><em>Some flexibility, but room for improvement<\/em>: Trello will detect 12-hour and 24-hour time formats, and will understand different inputted date formats, but the text still shows Month\/Day\/Year date formats. They&#8217;re not numeric, but some users may want to have the dates to be displayed as &#8217;12 October 2015&#8242; instead of &#8216;October 12, 2015&#8217;. (Update, 16 May 2015: Trello now detects both date and time format; the day is now in front for me, which is in line with my date settings on OS X.)<\/p>\n<p>Here is a good example of what to do from Wikipedia &#8211; there are no numerical dates except for year-month-day, which is unambiguous, and you have the choice between Day Month Year, Year Month Day and Month Day Year.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/expectedly.org\/inclusivetech\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Screen-Shot-2014-05-23-at-05.57.31.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-17\" src=\"http:\/\/expectedly.org\/inclusivetech\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Screen-Shot-2014-05-23-at-05.57.31-300x145.png\" alt=\"A date format selector on Wikipedia, with options for no preference, month day year, day month year and year month day. \" width=\"300\" height=\"145\" srcset=\"https:\/\/expectedly.org\/inclusivetech\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Screen-Shot-2014-05-23-at-05.57.31-300x145.png 300w, https:\/\/expectedly.org\/inclusivetech\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Screen-Shot-2014-05-23-at-05.57.31.png 614w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Addition, 11 April 2015:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m convinced that the <strong>US &#8216;Month\/Day\/Year&#8217; date format should be avoided<\/strong> in sites that will be used outside the US &#8211; and especially websites that will be translated into other languages. People including date formatting in scripts should make the<strong> default English format the ISO standard (Year\/Month\/Day)<\/strong>, making regional preferences like MDY and DMY opt-in by specifying a language and dialect. I&#8217;ve seen too many websites where the American date format lurks as an artefact, even on localisations for other languages like French and German.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(updated 16 Sep 2015 &#8211; information about LinkedIn and date formatting issues) Some developers will hard-code the date and time format in their software. Sometimes this only applies to their English-language interfaces, but sometimes it extends further, which is even more thoughtless. Many American and anglophone Canadian developers tend to impose the \u2018Month\/Day\/Year\u2019 date format&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/expectedly.org\/inclusivetech\/date-time\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Use flexible date and time formats and avoid confusing users<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/expectedly.org\/inclusivetech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/expectedly.org\/inclusivetech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/expectedly.org\/inclusivetech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/expectedly.org\/inclusivetech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/expectedly.org\/inclusivetech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/expectedly.org\/inclusivetech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":176,"href":"https:\/\/expectedly.org\/inclusivetech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/expectedly.org\/inclusivetech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/expectedly.org\/inclusivetech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/expectedly.org\/inclusivetech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}