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In Poland, the official system for representing dates and times follows the international ISO 8601 standard. However, in less official use, other conventions prevail, such as the day-month-year order and several Polish language abbreviations.
In Poland, the first system for denoting abbreviated dates used Roman numerals for months (e.g., 11 XI 1918 for Independence Day). The current year can be replaced by the abbreviation br. (bieżący rok; current year) and the current month can similarly be replaced by the abbreviation bm. (bieżący miesiąc; current month), in which case the year is omitted altogether. [1] The Roman notation still prevails in private communication, except for date stamps where Arabic numerals are used (as in "Berlin, 9.05.1945"). The authorities changed the order of the date stamps in 1979 to follow Polish industrial standard PN-90/N-01204 (Polskie Normy) similar to ISO 8601; 1981-12-13 has been the preferred format since then.
The month name is written where enough space is provided for the date; the month is in the genitive case (because of the meaning e.g., “first day of May”) and the ordinals are often incorrectly [2] followed by a full stop to indicate they are ordinal; the date is often preceded by the abbreviation "dn." (dnia; day) and followed by the abbreviation "r." (rok year), as in "dn. 1. maja 1997 r.". The month name can be abbreviated to three initial letters where an actual date stamping device is used, e.g., on letter envelopes.
Poland adopted the ISO 8601 standard for date format in official, especially electronic, communication in 2002. For everyday usage and for less official papers, however, the traditional formats are d.mm.[yy]yy [3] or dd.mm.[yy]yy (i.e., 7.08.2008, 07.08.2008, 07.08.08) are very common in Poland because of speaking order: "day month year".
Monday is the first day of the week.
A 12-hour clock is commonly used in speech when unambiguous (usually amongst people who live in or come from the Anglosphere), with the AM/PM distinction denoted by phrases rano ("in the morning"), po południu ("in the afternoon"), wieczorem ("in the evening"), w nocy ("at night"), and nad ranem ("before daybreak" or "in the wee hours") when needed; written communication uses 24-hour clock almost universally, including written forms of informal speech. 24-hour times will often be read out in 12-hour form, so that the recipient of a text message "Let's meet at 15:00" could relay it as "she said to meet at three" to their companions. The written notation "AM" and "PM" is never used, not even to transcribe speech that used 12-hour times. Times that introduce ambiguity in 12-hour notation (12:00AM and 12:00PM) are sometimes avoided in speech and replaced by "noon" and "midnight", but in the absence of further clarification, 24-hour interpretation prevails, such that dwunasta ("twelve o'clock") refers to noon and midnight is expressed as dwunasta w nocy ("twelve o'clock at night") or similar.
In a speech hours are usually divided in quarters, and when read out often rounded to the nearest 15-minutes, so that 12:43 becomes za piętnaście pierwsza ("fifteen to one") or za kwadrans pierwsza ("quarter to one"), and similarly 18:14 becomes piętnaście po szóstej ("fifteen past six") or kwadrans po szóstej ("quarter past six"). Half hours are given as wpół do, i.e. half to, rather than half past as is common in English, and similar to many non-English languages. Half hours can themselves be used as anchors for "to" and "past", so that 17:35 may be read as pięć po wpół do szóstej ("five past half to six"). Quarters of an hour are also used to denote time intervals, such as in czekaliśmy prawie trzy kwadranse ("we waited for almost three quarters [of an hour]"). Quarters, halves and "to"/"past" notation are used exclusively in speech and exclusively with 12-hour times, such that 13:16 might be read as szesnaście po pierwszej ("sixteen past one") or kwadrans po pierwszej ("quarter past one"), but it's an error to say szesnaście po trzynastej ("sixteen past thirteen"); it may only be pronounced trzynasta szesnaście ("thirteen-sixteen").
The 24-hour clock is used exclusively in official documents. The day breaks around 4 AM according to common sense, so that timetables will often roll earlier hours into the preceding day, albeit several broadcasters extend their published schedules till 6 AM.
When the hour goes by itself, it is preceded by the abbreviation "godz." (godzina; hour); when it is accompanied by minutes, this introductory abbreviation is not needed. Minutes are traditionally superscribed to the hour and underlined, as in 1745 (both in handwriting and in typewritten documents). This is by far the prevailing form in handwritten text, but very rare in electronic communication other than official documents, owing to the difficulty of producing it in most applications. According to the Polish printed publishing norm, a dot is used to separate hours and minutes when not using superscription but popularity of electronic devices caused the dot to be often replaced with a colon (less official).
A calendar date is a reference to a particular day represented within a calendar system. The calendar date allows the specific day to be identified. The number of days between two dates may be calculated. For example, "25 November 2024" is ten days after "15 November 2024". The date of a particular event depends on the observed time zone. For example, the air attack on Pearl Harbor that began at 7:48 a.m. Hawaiian time on 7 December 1941 took place at 3:18 a.m. Japan Standard Time, 8 December in Japan.
ISO 8601 is an international standard covering the worldwide exchange and communication of date and time-related data. It is maintained by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and was first published in 1988, with updates in 1991, 2000, 2004, and 2019, and an amendment in 2022. The standard provides a well-defined, unambiguous method of representing calendar dates and times in worldwide communications, especially to avoid misinterpreting numeric dates and times when such data is transferred between countries with different conventions for writing numeric dates and times.
The modern 24-hour clock is the convention of timekeeping in which the day runs from midnight to midnight and is divided into 24 hours. This is indicated by the hours passed since midnight, from 00(:00) to 23(:59), with 24(:00) as an option to indicate the end of the day. This system, as opposed to the 12-hour clock, is the most commonly used time notation in the world today, and is used by the international standard ISO 8601.
A timestamp is a sequence of characters or encoded information identifying when a certain event occurred, usually giving date and time of day, sometimes accurate to a small fraction of a second. Timestamps do not have to be based on some absolute notion of time, however. They can have any epoch, can be relative to any arbitrary time, such as the power-on time of a system, or to some arbitrary time in the past.
Different conventions exist around the world for date and time representation, both written and spoken.
Date and time notation around the world varies.
Date and time notation in Canada combines conventions from the United Kingdom, conventions from the United States, and conventions from France, often creating confusion. The Government of Canada specifies the ISO 8601 format for all-numeric dates. It recommends writing the time using the 24-hour clock (23:14) for maximum clarity in both Canadian English and Canadian French, but also allows the 12-hour clock (11:14 p.m.) in English.
Date and time notation in the United States differs from that used in nearly all other countries. It is inherited from one historical branch of conventions from the United Kingdom. American styles of notation have also influenced customs of date notation in Canada, creating confusion in international commerce.
In Finland, the usual way of writing dates in normal text is with the months spelled out. The format varies according to the language used. In Finnish, a full stop is placed after the day to indicate an ordinal: 31. toukokuuta 2002; furthermore, the month is in the partitive case, always marked by -ta. The month can also be written first, now in genitive case : toukokuun 31. pnä 2002. In Swedish, the full stop is not used and the month is in nominative : den 31 maj 2002.
In Spain, date notation follows the DD/MM/YYYY format. Time notation depends on the level of formality and varies in written and spoken formats. Official time is given using the 24-hour clock, and the 12-hour clock is often used in informal speech.
Date and time notation in Sweden mostly follows the ISO 8601 standard: dates are generally written in the form YYYY-MM-DD. Although this format may be abbreviated in a number of ways, almost all Swedish date notations state the month between the year and the day. Months are not capitalised when written. The week number may also be used in writing and in speech. Times are generally written using 24-hour clock notation, with full stops as separators, although 12-hour clock notation is more frequently used in speech.
Date and time notation in the United Kingdom records the date using the day–month–year format. The time can be written using either the 24-hour clock (23:59) or the 12-hour clock (11:59 p.m.), either with a colon or a full stop (11.59 p.m.).
The European Committee for Standardization (CEN) and (CENELEC) adopted ISO 8601 with EN 28601, now EN ISO 8601. As a European Norm, CEN and CENELEC member states are obligated to adopt the standard as national standard without alterations as well.
Date and time notation in Japan has historically followed the Japanese calendar and the nengō system of counting years. At the beginning of the Meiji period, Japan switched to the Gregorian calendar on Wednesday, 1 January 1873, but for much domestic and regional government paperwork, the Japanese year is retained. Japanese people and businesses have also adopted various conventions in accordance with their use of kanji, the widespread use of passenger trains, and other aspects of daily life.
Thailand has adopted ISO 8601 under national standard: TIS 1111:2535 in 1992. However, Thai date and time notation reflects the country’s cultural development through the years used. The formal date format is D/M/YYYY format (1/6/25), nowadays using the Buddhist Era (BE). The full date format is day-month-year format which is written in Thai. While a 24-hour system is common for official use, colloquially, a 12-hour format with terms like “morning” and “night”(Thai :ค่ำ, pronounced [Kh̀ả]) or a modified 6-hour format is used.
Date and time notation in the Philippines varies across the country in various, customary formats. Some government agencies in the Philippines have adopted time and date representation standard based on the ISO 8601, notably the Philippines driver's license and the Unified Multi-Purpose ID.
The most formal manner of expressing the full date and/or time in South Korea is to suffix each of the year, month, day, ante/post-meridiem indicator, hour, minute and second with the corresponding unit and separating each with a space:
The date and time in Australia are most commonly recorded using the day–month–year format and the 12-hour clock, although 24-hour time is used in some cases. For example, some public transport operators such as V/Line and Transport NSW use 24-hour time, although others use 12-hour time instead.