What happened on 9/11? The format wars.
What is so special about the date 9/11? I can remember where I was on that date one year not so long ago, and it became a day that marked a major turning point in history. The day was the 9th of November 1989 and the Berlin wall, which then divided the two halves of Germany, was unceremoniously torn down as the Soviet Union relaxed its communist grip on Eastern Europe. Of course, I also recognise that 9/11 refers to another important date in our recent past: when read differently, it refers to the 11th of September, which was an unwelcome but no less historic day in the year 2001.
You say “tomayto” and Ｉ say “tomarto”. Sure, there’s a bit of that going on here, but my rant goes much deeper than mere pronunciation and semantics. The different numerical forms used for dates can be confusing, problematic and the source of serious errors. I might get fined $75 for missing my dentist appointment, which I thought was on the 2nd of April but which had actually been scheduled for the 4th of February. And if I don’t set my computer’s file system in a way which makes sense to me, I risk making time consuming mistakes when trying to find a document or an email from a given day. These examples may seem petty, but they’re the thin end of the wedge.
If Eisenhower and Montgomery had a similar misunderstanding, D-Day might never have happened and Europe may never have been liberated from the Nazis. The allies originally chose the 5th of June for the day of the landings. A misunderstanding with the dates might have left the Americans with very little support on the beaches of Normandy on the 6th of May. Fortunately there was no misunderstanding and in fact bad weather on the 5th postponed the invasion until the 6th. I can’t help but wonder if a higher authority took control of the weather, just so that both sides of the pond could commemorate 6/6/44 in the future, together and without confusion.
A friend of mine once argued in favour of the American way of writing the date numerically, which puts the month first in order, because, according to him that is the way in which we say the date in words. Not so: I hear British people on the radio and television all the time saying their dates in words with the day followed by the month, as in “the 12th of December”. Even if they choose to say it with the month first, they would not write the date numerically in that sequence.
One might argue that a world of different languages is richer for it, so people should choose whichever format they prefer and that I should cease my rant. I counter that we at least know when someone is speaking a different language to us, but in this case we cannot always tell – and that is a problem.
Another line of reasoning against conformity would argue that each country should be able to write numerical dates in any way they choose, just so long as everyone knows the accepted standard for their country. That would be fine on a domestic scale, but we all now live in the global community and being understood is good for trade, foreign relations and humanity as a whole.
The American way is a little backwards, because the numbers do not adhere to any sequential order of importance, plus the US is in a small minority of countries who use the format, but I am not necessarily calling for it to be abandoned in favour of another. In my ideal world I would simply expect consistency, whichever numerical order it may be.
In Canada, which is often torn between the European and the American ways of doing things, you will frequently find date orders specified with the additional notation “DMY”, “MDY” or “YMD”. The last of these does not always warrant the special instruction on how the date should be read, because there seems to be a universal acceptance that a date written with the four digits of the year first, will naturally be followed by the month and then the day. Perhaps my ideal world would be a place where I commemorate and solemnly remember the events of 2001/09/11 and where, two months later, I celebrate the way the world changed forever on 1989/11/09.
