RE: [libreoffice-users] French/English date

At 23:38 29/11/2011 +1100, Bruce Carlson wrote:
> It has bothered me for years but the correct long date format in 
> English or at least English English is :- eg: Tuesday the 29th. of 
> November, 2011. Note the correct use of articles, ordinals, commas 
> and full stops... (the things Americans call periods.) No word 
> processor or database application I have ever seen can format long 
> dates correctly in English or any other language that I'm aware of 
> and that is why I've written my own code and macros to format dates 
> the way I was taught at school and while that was many many many 
> years ago evolution is no excuse for inaccuracy. To format dates 
> incorrectly seems to me to be an expedience, not an attempt at 
> accuracy. Whilst we have for many years had to endure commercial 
> applications written in one particular cultural style or another I 
> believe open source is a very good opportunity to get localisations 
> (notice the use of "s" and not zed) correct and if people from 
> various cultures can contribute to this we will all be winners.

Sorry, but you were mis-taught at school.  What you write and what 
you see in written language does not always correspond exactly to 
what you say.  Yes: the way you say that date in British English may 
well be "tuesday the twenty-ninth of november twenty eleven", but 
that doesn't mean that you have to express all of those sounds in 
writing.  Take, for example, your "2011".  If that were an account 
number, you would probably read and speak it as "two oh one one" (or 
possibly "two zero one one") or "two oh double one"; if it were a 
plain number, you would say "two thousand and eleven" (USians would 
say "two thousand eleven"); as it is a date, you say "twenty 
eleven".  (Well, I hope you do.)  You don't read "29th" as "two nine 
tee aitch" or even as "twenty-nine tee aitch", but as 
"twenty-ninth".  Your telephone number may end "one oh double six", 
but the battle of Hastings was in "ten sixty-six": they are spoken 
differently but written the same.  James Bond wouldn't recognise 
"zero zero seven".

The normal way of writing your date in British English is "Tuesday 29 
November 2011", and you read this as "tuesday the twenty-ninth of 
november twenty eleven".  But you are very welcome to format your 
dates exactly as you wish, of course - until you get a job where you 
are required to follow the accepted system.

Oh, and you don't put a full stop after "29th" in any case: in 
British English usage there is no full stop if the end of the 
original is included in the abbreviation.  "Prof." has a full stop, 
but "Mr" and "Dr" do not; "Rev." has one but "Revd" does not.  Your 
primary school may well have got that wrong too.

There are plenty of authorities for all this, but you need to trust 
proper style guides, not primary school textbooks.  And there's a 
reason why you cannot find any product which follows your teachers' advice!

Brian Barker


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