what are the correct date formats to use in word

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  • Start date Start date
Depends what you mean by correct. It varies with purpose and what part of
the World you live in. Even then, the answer will be controversial.
Personally, I prefer to use

7 April 2005 or Friday 7 April 2005

when I am using it in a formal document or letter. If I use it in a list or
table, then I will often abbreviate the date to

7 Apr 05 or 7/4/05

Sometimes it is necessary to use an exact number of characters in databases
for instance, so it is necessary to input

07042005

One country reverses this though!

20050407
 
TF said:
One country reverses this though!

20050407
Click to expand...

Hi Terry,

It's not just one country -- with dates in YYYYMMDD format, alphanumeric
sorting produces the same order as date-value sorting. That's fairly useful
when typical old-as-dirt legacy software offers only alphanumeric sort. :-)
 
I ran across a reference in the Chicago Manual of Style that clarified this:
apparently it's an ISO standard (or suggestion)--nothing to do with the USA,
BTW, though we're often maligned as the source of this horror in
AutoComplete.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
Thanks for the follow-up.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
Yes, Geoff Oakes already posted that link earlier in this thread. Very
interesting reading.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
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