[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Format for Dates

Mon Oct 9 22:03:06 PDT 2006

Earl and all others,

  Add one more strong vote to standardize the recording of dates.
  I see nothing but positive results from a universal standard form of recording dates.
  I would be interested to hear opinions from the experts on the subject, especially on the negative side.
  Also a related question, how did it come about that in the case of numerals the standardization was much more widespread?

  Having been born in 1930, in my lifetime I have had the good fortune (or misfortune, depending on your point of view) to have lived under 4 distinctly different political systems. Each with it's own rules, customs, habits and preferences, including the recording of dates.
  So I too must make little side calculations every time I read, write or handle overseas correspondence or documents etc. 
  Standardizing the recording of dates would be simpler and beneficial for everyone involved. 

  One instance comes to mind, in recent years a lack of standardization in measurements in Science caused a monumental failure of a US Space Probe that had traveled into space for several years, I believe. Then, when approaching the distant planet, the soft landing procedure failed causing the destruction of the probe in the resulting crash-landing.
  The reported cause was said to be confusion of measurement units between the metric and conventional systems in calculating the braking force.

  Let's move toward standardization  (yyyy mm dd)

  Sig Matt

"Earl.Schultz" <Earl.Schultz at telusplanet.net> wrote:
  There seems to be some confusion regarding my original suggestion that we
standardize writing of dates and I did not want to continue the discussion
because I know we are all attached to the way we learned to write dates.
However, I would like to clarify what I had suggested.

There is nothing wrong with using dates such as October 3, 2006 or 3 October
2006. The dates are clear and I suggest that everyone use what they are
comfortable with using.

However, if dates are written as numbers only such as 03/10/06 or 10/03/06 I
suggested that we abandon the US and the UK/Canadian past practices and
adopt the International Standard of yy/mm/dd. Only if we all use the same
standard will numerical dates be readable to all. We can argue to keep our
preferred method but you can guarantee that the date will be unreadable to
some people and that is not what we try to do in this fun hobby of ours.
Some genealogical societies have already had that debate and have selected
the international standard; our Canadian government is mixed in its use of
it; and even our new high security cheques give a choice in the date format.
My suggestion only referred to numerically written dates.

One very big advantage of this numerical format is that if you name your
files with this date format they will be in chronological order on your
computer. Consider filing your copies of the SGGEE Journal as 122004
Journal, 032005 Journal, or Dec2004 Journal and Mar2005 Journal etc. and the
Journals will be filed alphabetically or numerically by month but will be
more difficult to find specific issues. But if you name your files 200412
Journal and 2005Mar Journal all Journals will be filed chronologically with
the most recent last in your list. This is a strong advantage if you have a
large number of time dependent files. Incidentally, I file my copies of the
Journal by vol # and issue #, with the date, which accomplishes the same
thing.

Sorry for not being clear on my first raising of this issue but I was
responding to someone who raised the problem of trying to read numbered
dates on genealogical notes received from someone else. The problem does
exist and I didn't want to ignore it when a solution is available.

Earl Schultz
------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2006 16:03:16 -0600
From: "Ted Belke" 
Subject: Re: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Format for Dates, Places, Tel,
Names
To: "Clifford" , "eclipse"

Cc: C2 Holtz 
Message-ID: <004001c6e5a5$660ed350$6401a8c0 at HomeBody>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
reply-type=original

Hi All

I agree there should be a standard format for expressing dates and I really
like the format that we are using where dates are expressed as 1 October
2006 and would not like to see it changed.

Several examples have been given to support a change to the "General to
Particular" format but there many other examples where "Particular to
General" formats are commonly used on a daily basis, for example letter
addresses, people names, etc.

In my opinion it is not broken so it does not need fixing. Please leave it
alone.

Particular to General----Ted Belke

----- Original Message -----
From: "Clifford" 
To: "eclipse" 
Cc: "C2 Holtz" 
Sent: Saturday, September 30, 2006 7:19 AM
Subject: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Format for Dates, Places, Tel, Names

>I agree with Earl Schultz that all DATES should be written in the format
> Year Month Day [yyyy mm dd].
> That is, from General to Particular.
>
> The same format can also be used for PLACES, that is:
> Country Province County Village.
> This is the format used in many European countries.
>
> Telephone numbers also follow this logic:
> AreaNumber RegionNumber LocalNumber.
>
> The same format can also be used for person NAMES:
> Surname GivenName1 Given Name2.
> This format is used by some cultural groups.
>
> My above suggestions (General to Particular) are contrary to the
> procedures
> used by most genealogy programs such as Legacy, PAF, etc.
> But I think that you can see my logic. The same concept is used in
> computer
> programming.
>
> Hopefully, all genealogy programs (and even business practices), and
> especially sggee, will change to a more logical system.
>
> Documentation and interpretation will be much easier if there is a
> STANDARD
> logical format, and sggee can lead the way.
>
> Clifford Holtz H035

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