Internationalization Part 7 – Date Format
The format used to write dates is not consistent worldwide. Although dates basically include the day, month and year, their order and separators vary considerably. In fact, several differences are possible, including those within regions in the same given country.
There are two basic forms of writing dates:
a) Full Date
The chart provided below illustrates the different forms of writing full dates.
Obviously, month and weekday names vary from location to location; however, in Spanish-speaking countries, the day is placed before the month, letters are all in lower case, and “de” (in English, “of”) has been added.
In Japan, the weekday is omitted, and translations for day, month and year act more like separators.
b) Figure Date
Here you will find different abbreviated date formats:
Regarding figure date, it can be observed that in Spanish-speaking countries the order is day/month/year (also known as “dd/mm/yy”), unlike the USA pattern, namely month/day/year. In Japan the order is year/month/day. These differences may cause serious problems if they are not treated with due attention.
For instance, depending on the country, the date 07/04/01 can represent:
• July 4, 2001 (EUA)
• April 7, 2001 (Mexico)
• April 1, 2007 (Japan)
Well, no more dates for today. In the next post we will talk about fonts.
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