Date and time notation

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Date and time notation" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (January 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Date and time notation around the world varies.

An approach to harmonise the different notations is the ISO 8601 standard.

Since the Internet is a main enabler of communication between people with different date notation backgrounds, and software is used to facilitate the communication, RFC standards and a W3C tips and discussion paper were published.

• RFC 822 "Standard for the Format of Arpa Internet Text Messages"
  • published 1982-08-13
  • e.g. used for email
  • format: [day ,] 20 Jun 82 14:01:17
• RFC 2445 "Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification"
  • format: 19960401T235959Z
• RFC 3339 "Date and Time on the Internet: Timestamps"
  • published July 2002
  • intended use: new internet protocols
  • format: 1982-06-20
• W3C: "Use international date format (ISO)"