Dates in Written English

British English

In British English the day is usually put before the month. If you wish, you can add the ending of the ordinal number. The preposition of before the month is usually dropped. You can put a comma
before the year, but this is not common anymore in British English. It is common, however, if the date is part of a sentence: The conference takes place 10-12 December, 2003.(i)

Written Example: (the)5th (of) October, Two thousand and Four.
2004 / 5th October,2004

REMEMBER: when you say the year you have to say the numbers in pairs, when we talk about thousand; 1234 ( twelve, thirty-four); 1987 (nineteen, eighty-seven).

We say "the" and "of" but we don't write them.
American English

In American English the month is usually put before the day. If you wish, you can put the definite article before the day. It is common to write a comma before the year.

Example: October (the) 5(th), 2004

You can also write the date by using numbers only. The most common forms are:

Example: 5/10/04 or 5-10-04

Interesting Stuff

AD stands for Anno Domini (Latin for "In the year of (Our) Lord"), abbreviated as AD. It defines an epoch based on the traditionally-reckoned year of the conception or birth of Jesus of Nazareth. it is used in the English language to denote years after the start of this time.

BC stands for Before Christ (from the Ancient Greek "Christos" or "Anointed One", referring to Jesus), abbreviated as BC, it is used in the English language to denote years before the start of this time.

Some non-Christians also use the abbreviations AD and BC without intending to acknowledge the Christian connotation, but some people prefer the alternatives 'CE' (Common Era) and 'BCE' (Before Common Era), arguing that they are more neutral terms. .

A millennium (pl. millennia) is a period of one thousand years.

A century is a period of one hundred consecutive years. Centuries are numbered ordinally (e.g. "the nineteenth century").

A decade is a period of 10 years.

The decades from 1920 to 1999, are called "the Twenties", "the Sixties", etc. But the current decade has no universally accepted name. Some refer to the decade as the "twenty hundreds" while others may refer to it as the "two thousands". In written form, this could appear as "the '00s" or "the 2000s". But writing "the 2000s" or simply saying "the two-thousands" can cause confusion, since this could refer to the entire 21st century or even the entire millennium. Some people tried to popularize "the Noughties" as the decade's name. This is a play on words, nought means "zero" and noughties sounds both like nineties and naughty.

You'll find some more interesting facts about days and dates in the Interesting Facts Blog.

!Note - When writing the date as numbers British and American English differ. To write the date 7th of September 2007 a Brit would write dd/mm/yy (07/09/07) and an American would write mm/dd/yy (09/07/07). This often causes great confusion. It's better to write the date in full (7th September 2007 or September 7th 2007). It also looks nicer.


You can practice the "dates" in the Online Activities corner of this web.