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Dictionary of English - dates

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dates

To express a date as day-month-year, the preferred British style in formal writing is: On 10 July 1994 the parliament sat for the first time. The other British style, also used in the USA, is: On July 10, 1994, the parliament sat for the first time.

In informal notes, official forms, invoices etc, people sometimes use an all-figure form of the date, for example, 12.9.94. Do not use this form in international contexts, because British and American practice is different. In Britain the date is read as day-month-year, whereas in the USA it is read as month-day-year. So, while in Britain 2.9.94. would be read as the second of September 1994, in the USA it would be read as the ninth of February 1994. If you meet an all-figure form of the date in an international context, be aware that it is likely to need the American interpretation.

Material produced on a computer often has an all-figure form of the date. Note that in this the numbers 1 to 9 are preceded by zero, and only the last two digits of the year are used. In Britain the second of September 1994 would have the form 02 09 94. However, many computer programs are designed in the USA, and some automatically put the day's date on a document. In this case it will be the American form, with month before day, unless you change it.

If the year is not given, the preferred style is to spell out the day of the month: the session of the tenth of July. The alternative is: the session of 10 July. When only month and year are given, the preferred style is without punctuation: July 1994.

When centuries are mentioned, spell them out without using capital letters: the fourteenth century; the mid-twentieth century; nineteenth-century reforms. In cases such as the last example, where the century comes before a noun, hyphens are used by some British writers, but the current trend is towards the American practice of leaving them out.

There are two ways of referring to a decade. In an essay or report use the number of the year plus s: in the 1940s. It is no longer usual to put an apostrophe before the s. In informal writing and newspaper features the abbreviated form of the word is often used: in the forties.

The abbreviations AD and BC stand for Anno Domini, which is Latin for 'the Year of Our Lord', and Before Christ. These abbreviations may be written with or without full stops. AD always goes before the number of the year, and BC goes after it. Tiberius lived from 42 BC to AD 37.

For information on quoting the dates of publications, see essay and report writing.