Special Notes: Writing the Date

There are different ways of writing the date in English. Generally, dates are read the same way, for example: the first of September two thousand and seven.

In Britain, you can write the date the following way: 01/09/2007 respectively 01/09/07.
First comes the day, then the month, then the year.

In America, the date is often written this way: 09/01/2007 respectively 09/01/07.
Here, the month comes first, followed by the day and the year.

As you can see, those two different ways of writing the date can be confusing, because you cannot always tell what the day and what the month is. Therefore the safest way of writing the date is 1 September 2007 respectively 1st September. Only use the abbreviations 'st' (for 'first'), 'nd' ('second'), 'rd' ('third'), 'th' ('fourth', 'fifth', 'sixth' etc.) when you do not write the year.

You may have seen other ways of writing the date (e.g. September 1, 2007 / September 2007, 1); those ways are outdated even if some people – and many schoolbooks for English learners – still use them.

A common short way of writing the date, for example in notes, is 1 Sep 2007.