WRITTING CALENDAR DATES AND TIME USING INTERNATIONAL STANDARD FORMAT

Aug 11, 2019 News, Standards in Focus

Oftentimes, we find ourselves in situations where we are forced to interpret dates that are written in documents that require our attention, or even to express them. Usually, it becomes a challenge to figure out which digits represent the day, the month and the year.
At a hospital or a medical clinic for example, misunderstanding the date is not something doctors, nurses and health workers can afford. This can result in expired medicine being prescribed to patients or medication being administered too late or too early, which can contribute to patient health implications or even confusion in patient’s appointments.
Similarly, expressing the time incorrectly has its own implications and can create doubts, if not quickly clarified. Many times we are told that “I will come by at eight o’clock” or “the event starts at five O’clock”; forgetting to enquire whether it is eight o’clock or five o’clock in the morning or the evening.
Too often, this happens to passengers travelling by air resulting in passengers missing their flights. Situations such as these can result in unwanted frustration or the wastage of time, which could have been spent doing something else.
The Guyana National Bureau of Standards (GNBS) has sought to address these situations by educating organisations and the general public of the standardized and internationally recognized way of writing dates and time to eliminate confusion and allow for easy interpretation.
This is according to the international standard ISO 8601, which deals with numeric representations of dates and time. This standard outlines two internationally acceptable formats for writing the date; the all numeric and the non-numeric formats as stated below:
1. All numeric format (only numbers are used) – For example, today is 2019-05-12
2. Non-numeric format – For example today is Sunday, May 12, 2019
The all numeric format places the year first in four digits followed by the month in two digits and then the day also in two digits. It must be noted that the year, month and day are separated by a dash (-) and not a slash (/).
The non-numeric format starts with the day (Sunday), followed by the month (May) and the day (12) and then the year (2019). However, it would also be acceptable if the day is not included. It must be noted that the ordinals “st, th, rd and nd” are not recommended by the ISO 8601 Standard.
For time, the international twenty-four hour clock system is recommended instead of am or pm. To express the time correctly say eight hours (08:00h) instead of eight o’clock and, sixteen hours thirty (16:30h) instead of Four thirty (4:30)
NB. The day starts at 00:00h and ends at 23:59… Therefore, you should avoid saying eight hundred hours and sixteen hundred hours.
For further information on this subject, call the Guyana National Bureau of Standards on Telephone numbers: 219-0064 or 219-0065.

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