Date formats: how to write the date

Today’s date in every format

• US numeric (MM/DD/YYYY)11/11/2026Copy
• Day first (DD/MM/YYYY)11/11/2026Copy
• Dotted day first (DD.MM.YYYY)11.11.2026Copy
• ISO 8601 (YYYY-MM-DD)2026-11-11Copy
• ISO 8601 basic (YYYYMMDD)20261111Copy
• Year first with slashes (YYYY/MM/DD)2026/11/11Copy
• US writtenNovember 11, 2026Copy
• US written with weekdayWednesday, November 11, 2026Copy
• Day-first written11 November 2026Copy
• Day-first with weekdayWednesday 11 November 2026Copy
• US abbreviatedNov 11, 2026Copy
• Day-first abbreviated11 Nov 2026Copy
• Ordinal, US styleNovember 11th, 2026Copy
• Ordinal, spoken stylethe 11th of November, 2026Copy
• Military style (DD MMM YY)11 NOV 26Copy
• ISO week date2026-W46-3Copy
• ISO ordinal date2026-315Copy
• Short US (M/D/YY)11/11/26Copy
• Date and time (RFC 3339 / ISO 8601)2026-11-11T18:27:31-05:00Copy
• UTC timestamp2026-11-11T23:27:31ZCopy
• Unix time (seconds)1794439651Copy

Values follow your local date and time zone and update live. Copy any of them with one tap.

Date format by country

Three orders are in use. The United States writes month, day, year. Most of the world writes day, month, year. China, Japan, Korea and the ISO standard write year, month, day. The table shows today’s date as each country’s conventions, recorded in the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR), format it in your browser, in that country’s language:

Formats from CLDR (Unicode CLDR) as built into your browser; versions differ slightly between browsers. Within a country, official style guides can prefer other forms, as below.

Official style guides

• United States: the U.S. Government Publishing Office style manual writes “June 29, 1985 (not June 29th, 1985)” and “June 1985 (not June, 1985)”, and uses day-month-year, “15 April 1951”, for military dates (GPO Style Manual, chapter 12).
• United Kingdom: the GOV.UK style guide writes “4 June 2017”: no ordinals, no comma between month and year, months in full except where space is short (Jan, Feb), and “to” in date ranges (GOV.UK).
• International: the W3C points out that a reader can take 03/04/02 three different ways, and sets out two unambiguous alternatives for web pages: the ISO 8601 form, 2003-04-02, or the month as a word with a four-digit year, 2 April 2003 (W3C).

ISO 8601: the international date format

ISO 8601 writes dates from the largest unit to the smallest: year, month, day, as in 2026-11-11. It always uses four digits for the year and two for the month and day, so the order is never in doubt, and dates sort correctly as plain text. The internet’s version of the standard, RFC 3339, adds the time and the offset from UTC: 2026-11-11T18:27:31-05:00 (RFC 3339).

The standard has two other date forms: the week date, 2026-W46-3 (year, week, weekday; see week numbers), and the ordinal date, 2026-315 (year and day of the year; see Julian dates). The compact “basic” format drops the hyphens: 20261111.

Ordinals and abbreviations

Ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 11th, 21st, 22nd) belong to speech and to formal invitations: “Wednesday, the eleventh of November”. Both the US and UK government style guides leave them out of written dates. When you do use them, the suffix follows the last digit, except for 11, 12 and 13, which take “th”.

Abbreviated months save space in tables and on forms: Nov 11, 2026 or 11 Nov 2026. Writing the month as a word, even abbreviated, is the simplest way to make a date unambiguous.

Dates on checks, letters and legal documents

• Checks: the US date line has no required format, so 11/11/2026, Nov 11, 2026 and November 11, 2026 are all fine. What matters is the date itself: a check is valid with an earlier or later date than the day it is written (UCC § 3-113), and once it is more than six months old the bank may refuse it (UCC § 4-404).
• Business letters: spell the month out at the top: November 11, 2026 in the US, 11 November 2026 in the UK and Commonwealth.
• Legal documents: follow the form the document already uses; traditional wording such as “the 11th day of November, 2026” is still common in deeds and contracts. For deadlines, give the date in full and, if it matters, the time zone.
• Forms: match the boxes. MM/DD/YYYY means 11/11/2026; DD/MM/YYYY means 11/11/2026.

Date formats in programming

C, Python, Ruby and the Unix date command format dates with strftime codes defined by POSIX (The Open Group):

In JavaScript, new Date().toISOString() gives the UTC timestamp, and Intl.DateTimeFormat formats a date for any locale with CLDR data, which is how the country table above is made. In Excel, =TEXT(TODAY(),"yyyy-mm-dd") turns today’s date into ISO text. Store and exchange dates in ISO 8601 or as UTC timestamps; format them for people only at the end.

Pitfalls that cause wrong dates

• 03/04/2026 is March 4 in the US and 3 April almost everywhere else. Any date with both numbers up to 12 is ambiguous.
• Two-digit years such as 03/04/26 add a third reading, year-month-day, used in East Asia, and leave the century unstated.
• Missing time zones: “by midnight on the 15th” ends at different instants in different places. Name the zone or give UTC.
• 12 AM and 12 PM: 12 AM is midnight at the start of the day; 12 PM is noon. Write “noon” and “midnight”, or use 24-hour time.
• Spreadsheets guessing: a spreadsheet set to one region can read 03/04/2026 the other way. Type ISO dates, or use DATE(2026,3,4), which Microsoft recommends over typing dates as text (Microsoft).

Questions about writing dates

More date and time tools

• Today’s date The date and day where you are, in every format
• What time is it Exact time, UTC offset and daylight saving time
• Days from today Count days, weeks or months forward or back
• Days between dates Days, weeks, months and business days
• Day of the week The weekday of any date, and how to work it out
• Week number ISO 8601 and US week numbers for any year
• Calendar Printable year calendar with week numbers
• Julian date Day of the year, YYDDD codes and Julian Day
• Time zone converter Convert a time between any two zones
• Leap year The leap year rule, next leap year, leap seconds