Date and time notation in United Kingdom

Date

English

Dates are written traditionally in "day month year" order, using a stroke as the separator. This order is used in both the traditional all-numeric date (e.g., "31/12/99") as well as in the expanded form (e.g., "31 December 1999"). Writing the day of the month as an ordinal number (e.g., "31st December") is also common - and since the advent of automatic correction in word processors, the ordinal indicator has been lifted into superscript (e.g., "31^st December") in typed documents, to match the handwritten style.

When saying the date, it is usually pronounced using the ordinal number of the day first, then the word "of" then the month (e.g., "the 31st of December 1999"). The month-first form (e.g., "December the 3rd") was common a hundred years ago, but is now less frequently used.

Welsh

The "day month year" order is also the case in modern Welsh (e.g., "20 Mai 1999", "20fed Mai 1999", "20^fed Mai 1999"). The "month day year" order (e.g., "Mai 20, 1999") was previously more common than it is nowadays, it not being unusual to see a Welsh "month day year" date next to an English "day month year" date on a bilingual plaque from the latter half of the 20th century. "20 Mai 1999" is read as "yr ugeinfed o Fai mil naw naw naw", with the usual soft mutation of M to F after "o" (of). 1999 can be read as either "mil naw naw naw" (thousand nine nine nine) or "un naw naw naw" (one nine nine nine).

Although ISO 8601 has been adopted as British Standard BS ISO 8601:2004, the use of its big-endian date notation remains mostly restricted to specialist use (e.g., use-by dates on medical products^[1]) and computer applications.

Weeks are generally referred to by the date on which they start, referring to the Monday, e.g., "week commencing 5 March". ISO 8601 week numbers are found in diaries and are used in business.

Time

English

Both the 12-hour and 24-hour notations are used in the United Kingdom. The 12-hour notation is still widely used in ordinary life, written communication and displays, and continues to be used in spoken language. The 24-hour notation is used in timetables and in some computer applications; computers running Microsoft Windows with UK regional settings default to display time in 24-hour notation. The 24-hour notation is used more often than in the United States especially for bus, train and airline timetables, but not quite as commonly as in much of the non-English speaking world. To separate hours and minutes, either a dot (e.g., 10.00pm) or a colon (10:00pm) can be used. To separate hours, minutes and seconds, a colon (10:00:15) is normally used.

In British English, the expression "half hour" is used colloquially to denote 30 minutes past the hour, i.e. "half ten" means 10:30. (This differs from the same expression in Dutch, German, Hungarian or Czech where it denotes 30 minutes before the hour.)

Welsh

The Welsh language usage of the 12-hour and 24-hour clocks is similar to that of UK English above. However the 24-hour notation is interesting in that it only has a written, not a spoken form, e.g., written 09.00 and 21.00 are both said ("naw o'r gloch" nine o'clock, literally nine of the bell). Minutes are always either "wedi" (after) or "i" (to) the hour, e.g., 21.18 "deunaw (munud) wedi naw" (eighteen (minutes) past nine) and 21.42 "deunaw (munud) i ddeg" (eighteen (minutes) to ten). Phrases such as "y bore" ((of) the morning), "y prynhawn" ((of) the afternoon) and "yr hwyr" ((of) the evening) are used to distinguish times in 12-hour notation, much like Latin "am" and "pm", which are also in common use, e.g., 9.00yb (09.00) as opposed to 9.00yh (21.00).

References

1. ^ International Standard ISO 15223: Medical devices – Symbols to be used with medical device labels, labeling and information to be supplied