Results 1 to 4 of 4

Thread: Are there two different ways to write the dates in Hong Kong?

  1. #1
    Member CharRay_Obsessed's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2005
    Posts
    87

    Default Are there two different ways to write the dates in Hong Kong?

    With respect to Spcnet forum members,

    I would like to know how HK people write the dates. Do they write the dates like 27/06/2007 or like 2007/06/27 since I have seen both ways being written in some HK websites. I have an article saying that writing 27/06/2007 is how English-speaking people in HK would write the dates, and writing 2007/06/27 would be how Chinese-speaking people in HK write the dates. Can someone please confirm this information?

    Thanks,
    Minh Giao

  2. #2
    Senior Member Han Solo's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2002
    Posts
    5,569

    Default

    For what it is it worth,

    1) The South China Morning Post (one of HK's english dailies) uses the format of MM/DD/YY

    2) The Hong Kong Exchange uses DD/MM/YY

    3) Ming Pao (a Chinese Daily) uses YY/MM/DD

    So, I'm pretty confused too.

    Han Solo
    Wuxiapedia

    Quote Originally Posted by bliss
    I think they're probably at the same level as or one level below Ah Qing, which is about the level of a 2nd or 3rd generation Quan Zhen disciple.
    Troll Control

  3. #3
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Mar 2003
    Posts
    1,945

    Default

    most if not all asian countries use yyyy-mm-dd. to avoid confusion, use 2007-Jul-12.

  4. #4
    Registered User JamesG's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2004
    Location
    Lethbridge AB
    Posts
    2,466

    Default

    FYI, there is a world standard for dates now:
    "The international standard date notation is

    YYYY-MM-DD

    where YYYY is the year in the usual Gregorian calendar, MM is the month of the year between 01 (January) and 12 (December), and DD is the day of the month between 01 and 31.

    For example, the fourth day of February in the year 1995 is written in the standard notation as

    1995-02-04

    Other commonly used notations are e.g. 2/4/95, 4/2/95, 95/2/4, 4.2.1995, 04-FEB-1995, 4-February-1995, and many more. Especially the first two examples are dangerous, because as both are used quite often in the U.S. and in Great Britain and both can not be distinguished, it is unclear whether 2/4/95 means 1995-04-02 or 1995-02-04. The date notation 2/4/5 has at least six reasonable interpretations (assuming that only the twentieth and twenty-first century are reasonable candidates in our life time).

    Advantages of the ISO 8601 standard date notation compared to other commonly used variants:

    easily readable and writeable by software (no ‘JAN’, ‘FEB’, ... table necessary)
    easily comparable and sortable with a trivial string comparison
    language independent
    can not be confused with other popular date notations
    consistency with the common 24h time notation system, where the larger units (hours) are also written in front of the smaller ones (minutes and seconds)
    strings containing a date followed by a time are also easily comparable and sortable (e.g. write “1995-02-04 22:45:00”)
    the notation is short and has constant length, which makes both keyboard data entry and table layout easier
    identical to the Chinese date notation, so the largest cultural group (>25%) on this planet is already familiar with it :-)
    date notations with the order “year, month, day” are in addition already widely used e.g. in Japan, Korea, Hungary, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and a few other countries and people in the U.S. are already used to at least the “month, day” order
    a 4-digit year representation avoids overflow problems after 2099-12-31
    As dates will look a little bit strange anyway starting with 2000-01-01 (e.g. like 1/1/0), it has been suggested that the year 2000 is an excellent opportunity to change to the standard date notation."

Similar Threads

  1. Hong Kong + Macau
    By jay_z in forum Travel and Food
    Replies: 1
    Last Post: 06-30-07, 08:01 PM
  2. Mr Hong Kong 2006
    By Sword Goddess in forum TVB Series
    Replies: 4
    Last Post: 07-10-06, 11:03 PM

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •