In Europe, dates are typically recorded dd-mm-yyyy. You may also find that they are recorded as dd.mm.yy. In the United States, dates are recorded as mm-dd-yyyy or mm/dd/yyyy. I am confident that you have seen dates like 08/03/1995 where you are unsure if it refers to August 3 or March 8. Recently, the International Standards Organization introduced the ISO date standard of yyyy-mm-dd. Using this notation will ensure that everyone knows 1995/08/03 is August the third. There are a number all the advantages to using this notation. A few are as follows:
easily readable, writeable, comparable and sortable by software
language independent
can not be confused with other popular date notations
consistency with the common 24h time notation system, where the larger units (hours) are also written in front of the smaller ones (minutes and seconds)
strings containing a date followed by a time are also easily comparable and sortable (e.g.
flower delivery
