On Friday 02 April 2010 16:06:18 Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
Not quite the same thing. UK and US English are different in some
respects ("two countries divided by the same language") but at least
it's clear that we're talking about specific regions and their
peculiarities (not to mention the local differences even within those
regions) so we can all make allowances. In the case of date formats,
it's the US versus everyone else and it actually does lead to ambiguity
in some cases.
[In some ways I'm reminded of when the UK was the only country in the
world to have a non-decimal currency, which wasn't that long ago -- I'm
old enough to remember the switchover.]
Not that I expect this to change of course.
I know for a fact that the date ambiguity once caused a major US company a big
problem. Apparently one of its servers was undergoing maintenance, and before
going back on-line the date was set to 3rd September instead of 9th March.
Automatic systems realised that their databases must be 6 months out of date,
and proceeded to rebuild them. You can imagine how long it took to get that
one sorted out again!
Anne
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