[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Format for Dates

[marlo]

I agree Rose,  I like to use the day,
month, year format with the month
spelled out.  Margaret


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rose Ingram" <roseingram at shaw.ca>
To: "ListServ" <ger-poland-volhynia at eclipse.sggee.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2006 8:40 PM
Subject: Re: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Format for Dates


> I'm sure we all get the gist of the matter now.  :-)
>
> I think the most important thing to is to spell out or abbreviate the 
> month
> when writing a date when inputting into our genealogy programs or paper
> work, as has been suggested.  Whether it be year, month and day  or vice
> versa.   This method will avoid errors being made or incorrect assumptions
> by made by others with whom you may share your genealogy with.
>
> Happy Ancestor Hunting,
> Rose Ingram
>
> From: "Sig Matt"
>> Earl and all others,
>>
>>  Add one more strong vote to standardize the recording of dates.
>>  I see nothing but positive results from a universal standard form of
>> recording dates.
>>  I would be interested to hear opinions from the experts on the subject,
>> especially on the negative side.
>>  Also a related question, how did it come about that in the case of
>> numerals the standardization was much more widespread?
>>
>>  Having been born in 1930, in my lifetime I have had the good fortune (or
>> misfortune, depending on your point of view) to have lived under 4
>> distinctly different political systems. Each with it's own rules, 
>> customs,
>> habits and preferences, including the recording of dates.
>>  So I too must make little side calculations every time I read, write or
>> handle overseas correspondence or documents etc.
>>  Standardizing the recording of dates would be simpler and beneficial for
>> everyone involved.
>>
>>  One instance comes to mind, in recent years a lack of standardization in
>> measurements in Science caused a monumental failure of a US Space Probe
>> that had traveled into space for several years, I believe. Then, when
>> approaching the distant planet, the soft landing procedure failed causing
>> the destruction of the probe in the resulting crash-landing.
>>  The reported cause was said to be confusion of measurement units between
>> the metric and conventional systems in calculating the braking force.
>>
>>  Let's move toward standardization  (yyyy mm dd)
>>
>>  Sig Matt
>>
>> "Earl.Schultz" <Earl.Schultz at telusplanet.net> wrote:
>>  There seems to be some confusion regarding my original suggestion that 
>> we
>> standardize writing of dates and I did not want to continue the 
>> discussion
>> because I know we are all attached to the way we learned to write dates.
>> However, I would like to clarify what I had suggested.
>>
>> There is nothing wrong with using dates such as October 3, 2006 or 3
>> October
>> 2006. The dates are clear and I suggest that everyone use what they are
>> comfortable with using.
>>
>> However, if dates are written as numbers only such as 03/10/06 or 
>> 10/03/06
>> I
>> suggested that we abandon the US and the UK/Canadian past practices and
>> adopt the International Standard of yy/mm/dd. Only if we all use the same
>> standard will numerical dates be readable to all. We can argue to keep 
>> our
>> preferred method but you can guarantee that the date will be unreadable 
>> to
>> some people and that is not what we try to do in this fun hobby of ours.
>> Some genealogical societies have already had that debate and have 
>> selected
>> the international standard; our Canadian government is mixed in its use 
>> of
>> it; and even our new high security cheques give a choice in the date
>> format.
>> My suggestion only referred to numerically written dates.
>>
>> One very big advantage of this numerical format is that if you name your
>> files with this date format they will be in chronological order on your
>> computer. Consider filing your copies of the SGGEE Journal as 122004
>> Journal, 032005 Journal, or Dec2004 Journal and Mar2005 Journal etc. and
>> the
>> Journals will be filed alphabetically or numerically by month but will be
>> more difficult to find specific issues. But if you name your files 200412
>> Journal and 2005Mar Journal all Journals will be filed chronologically
>> with
>> the most recent last in your list. This is a strong advantage if you have
>> a
>> large number of time dependent files. Incidentally, I file my copies of
>> the
>> Journal by vol # and issue #, with the date, which accomplishes the same
>> thing.
>>
>> Sorry for not being clear on my first raising of this issue but I was
>> responding to someone who raised the problem of trying to read numbered
>> dates on genealogical notes received from someone else. The problem does
>> exist and I didn't want to ignore it when a solution is available.
>>
>> Earl Schultz
>> ------------------------------
>
>
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