How to talk about dates in English

Writing a date seems simple enough until you actually have to do it. Month first or day first? Numbers or words? And what do you do when someone sends you “10/11” and you genuinely cannot tell if they mean October or November? To make sense of it all, it helps to start with the formats.

Date formats in English

There are three date formats used in English, and which one you come across depends on where the person writing it is from.

The most common in the United States is Month-Day-Year, or MDY. The month comes first, then the day, then the year. Don't forget the comma after the day. So September 29, 2023, written as numbers, looks like 09/29/2023. Out loud, that's "September twenty-ninth, twenty twenty-three."

The Day-Month-Year format, or DMY, is the norm in most other parts of the world, including the UK, Australia, and most of Europe. This time the day comes first, followed by the month and then the year. So that same date looks like 29 September 2023, or 29/09/2023. Out loud: "the twenty-ninth of September, twenty twenty-three."

The third format, Year-Month-Day, or YMD, is mostly used in technical settings like databases, file names, and software systems. It looks like 2023-09-29 or 2023.09.29, and you'd say "twenty twenty-three, September twenty-ninth."

This is also why "10/11" can confuse you. In MDY that's October 11th. In DMY it's the 10th of November. Same numbers, completely different dates.

How to write dates

Most months can be abbreviated when you're writing quickly or working with limited space. The rule of thumb is that shorter months — May, June, and July — stay as they are. The rest get shortened:

Jan., Feb., Mar., Apr., Aug., Sept., Oct., Nov., Dec.

So instead of writing "October 15, 2023" in full, you could write "Oct. 15, 2023" and it means exactly the same thing. Just don't forget the period after the abbreviation.

The other thing people often overlook is the ordinal ending on the day. In English, numbers don't stand alone when you're talking about dates — they come with a suffix: "st," "nd," "rd," or "th."

The pattern is more consistent than it looks:

• 1st, 21st, 31st (anything ending in 1, except 11)
• 2nd, 22nd (anything ending in 2, except 12)
• 3rd, 23rd (anything ending in 3, except 13)
• Everything else gets "th" — 4th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 20th, and so on

In practice:

• June 1st, 2023 — "June first, twenty twenty-three"
• August 2nd, 2023 — "August second, twenty twenty-three"
• March 13th, 2023 — "March thirteenth, twenty twenty-three"

How to say dates in English

Years in English are almost always split into two pairs. So 1990 becomes "nineteen ninety," and 1985 becomes "nineteen eighty-five."

That pattern held up fine until the year 2000 came along and broke everything. Nobody says "twenty hundred," so it became "two thousand." Then 2001 through 2009 gave people a choice — "two thousand and one" or "twenty oh-one" — and both are still used today. From 2010 onwards, most people switched back to the split: "twenty ten," "twenty twenty-three," and so on.

Decades follow the same logic. The 1980s are "the nineteen eighties," the 1990s are "the nineteen nineties," and the 2020s are "the twenty twenties." When you write them, the apostrophe goes before the number if you're shortening the century ('80s, '90s), not after (80's is a common mistake and technically incorrect).

Some dates have their own names that people use so naturally that saying the number out loud would sound strange. Nobody really says "July fourth" in a sentence. They say "the Fourth of July" or just "Independence Day." Similarly:

• October 31st is "Halloween."
• February 14th is "Valentine's Day."
• December 25th is "Christmas" or "Christmas Day."

When it comes to dates, knowing your formats can make or break a situation. Get it wrong and you could show up to a meeting on the wrong day or miss a deadline without even realizing it. But beyond avoiding mistakes, being able to write and say dates naturally is one of those small things that adds up to fluency. People understand you better, and they take you more seriously for it.