Partially discharged

My experience in Canada is that most Canadians go day/month/year. In the USA it is month/day/year

As well, Canada tends to use the 24 hour clock a bit more than the USA and Quebec is where it is used the most.

Novocastrian

I'm struggling to think how your spelling of potato might be pronounced, but if my waiter said that I'd just ask him to clarify.

A bit like Canadian waiters asking if I'd like a glass of wadda.

BristolUK

Do you mean "the man in the street"? Every Cheque book, federal forms, provincial forms I've ever done...they all have YYYY-MM-DD either alongside where it wants the date or faintly printed in the part they want it entered.

Pulaski

Canada is arguably the most confused/confusing country in the world, largely because of its southern neighbour who insists on the least logical date format of MDY.

Here is the map embedded in the above link, where cyan = DMY, Yellow = YMD, and Magenta = MDY. The other colours are mixes. ...... Dark grey = all three date orders.

scrubbedexpat091

Pulaski nailed it. No consistency in Canada.

Banks always seem to want Year-Month-Day

Some of the provincial stuff we filled out is Day-Month-Year & M/D/Y other forms just say date and you fill in whatever it is you want with no format suggestions.

Unless there are boxes asking for specific format, I just write it out in full.

September 25, 2016 to avoid any confusion.

Looking at best by dates on products there is no consistency either in format.

Pulaski

I meant to quote you in my post #49, above, not Novocastrian.

dave_j

The most easily computer sorted date string is the flexible 8 character YYYYMMDD. Database functions can easily deal with most date types although they must be consistent. I suspect the need to use YMD follows manual data entry and betrays the date format used by the internal bank database.

Pulaski

Any date stored in YMD format is the easiest to sort - it will automatically be in date order without any sort of record shuffling before it is sorted.

For almost as long as I have been saving MSOffice files I have prefixed the descriptive file name with the date in YYYYMMDD format ensuring that they stack up in date order. Any other format creates more work and is generally a PITA.

Novocastrian

If it's any comfort, the inadvertent quote failed to register in Who Quoted Me.

not2old

wouldn't that be more difficult?

Why not 25 September 2016, that way only the beginning part of the entrant is variable instead of the middle part of the equation.

Example, take a wall calendar displaying 'September 2016' (or whatever month in any year), by marking off the day/date before moving to the next date,this indicates which date or day that it is. Maybe too simple or stupid logic an explanation

Do folks when asked what date it is respond with...

September 25 or 25 September? I always answer with or use - day, month, year

Ebonhawke

Another thing that you will find in Canada, that is at least partially a result of the clash between European and American influences, is expressing units of measurement.

It's not unusual at all to ask someone how tall they are, and they'll reply 5 feet 10 inches. Immediately ask that same person how far it is to the next town, and they'll reply 20 km.

Ask someone the temperature outside, and you'll hear 20 Celsius. Ask that same person how long to bake a pie for, and you'll get the temperature in Fahrenheit.

Novocastrian

Given that Fahrenheit was a German and that feet and inches are archaic British units, where does the American influence come in?

It's also a bit unusual for someone to opine how long it takes a bake a pie in either Celsius or Fahrenheit.

Ebonhawke

American influence in that if you ask either of those questions south of the border, you'll get the response feet/inches (or miles for longer distances) and Fahrenheit.

The pie reference was just an example to illustrate that temperature units of measurement may differ when referring to cooking temperature vs outdoor temperature

Novocastrian

So the American influence is really a European influence after all.

Pulaski

The US is the last bastion* of what the British call "imperial measurements", and the US calls "standard measure" including the full range of miles, yards, feet and inches, tons (US), pounds and ounces, gallons, quarts and fluid ounces, and temperatures in Farenheit.

* IIRC the only other country not to have officially embraced the metric system is Burma.