Date and time notation in Australia

Summary

Date and time notation in Australia most commonly records the date using the day-month-year format (24 April 2024) and with the 12-hour clock (8:05 pm) most commonly used, although 24-hour time is used for some applications–e.g. some public transport operators such as V/Line[1] and Transport NSW[2] use 24-hour time, although others use 12-hour time instead.

Date and time notation in Australia [refresh]
Full date24 April 2024
All-numeric date24/04/2024
Time8:05 pm

Date edit

Australians typically write the date with the day leading, as in the United Kingdom and New Zealand:

  • 24 April 2024
  • 24/04/2024

The month–day–year order (April 24, 2024) is sometimes used, often in the mastheads of magazines, schools, newspapers,[3][4] advertisements, video games, news, and TV shows. MDY in numeric-only form (04/24/2024) is rarely used.

The ISO 8601 date format (2024-04-24) is recommended by the government to be used when communicating internationally.[5] It is also commonly used in software.

Weeks are most identified by the last day of the week, either the Friday in business (e.g., "week ending 19/1") or the Sunday in other use (e.g., "week ending 21/1"). Week ending is often abbreviated to "W/E" or "W.E." The first day of the week or the day of an event are sometimes referred to (e.g., "week of 15/1"). Week numbers (as in "the third week of 2007") are not often used, but may appear in some business diaries in numeral-only form (e.g., "3" at the top or bottom of the page). ISO 8601 week notation (e.g. 2024-W17) is not widely understood.[citation needed] Some more traditional calendars instead treat Sunday as the first day of the week.[citation needed]

There is disagreement in Australia over whether Monday or Sunday is the first day of the week, but it is Monday is considered to be the most officially correct answer,[6] and is the correct answer according to the Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR), since its October 2021 release.[7]

Time edit

The Australian government recommends using the 12-hour clock (8:05 pm), except where the 24-hour clock is more helpful in the context, such as in travel, scientific fields and the military.[5] The government also recommends a colon as the separator, however the single period is still used in some contexts.[5] They also suggest writing the noon/after noon qualifier as "am" or "pm" in lower-case without periods.[5]

References edit

  1. ^ "Why do you use 24-hour time?". V/Line - Regional public transport for Victoria. Retrieved 24 April 2024.
  2. ^ "New South Wales Train Link Timetable for the North Western Region". transportnsw.info. 1 July 2023. Retrieved 5 April 2024.
  3. ^ "Latest News". News Corp Australia. Archived from the original on 4 November 2017. Retrieved 4 November 2017.
  4. ^ "The West Australian Demo". The West Australian. 16 August 2016. Archived from the original on 1 September 2017. Retrieved 4 November 2017.
  5. ^ a b c d "Dates and time". Australian Government Style Manual. 17 October 2023.
  6. ^ Lyons, Gabrielle (17 August 2019). "Sunday Vs Monday: Which day do you consider the start of the week?". ABC News. Retrieved 24 April 2024.
  7. ^ "Unicode CLDR - CLDR 40 Release Note". cldr.unicode.org. 27 October 2021. Retrieved 24 April 2024.