In the
United States,
dates are traditionally written in the
"month-day-year" order, with neither increasing nor decreasing order of significance. This order is used in both the traditional all-numeric date (e.g., "1/21/18" or "01/21/2018") as well as in the expanded form (e.g., "January 21, 2016"—usually spoken with the year as a cardinal number and the day as an
ordinal number, e.g., "January twenty-first, two thousand sixteen"), with the historical rationale that the year was often of lesser importance. The most commonly used separator in the all-numeric form is the
slash (/), although the
hyphen (-) and
period (.) have also emerged in the all-numeric format recently due to
globalization.
The day-month-year order has been increasing in usage since the early 1980s. Many genealogical databases and the
Modern Language Association citation style use this format. When filling in the
Form I-94 cards and new customs declaration cards used for people entering the U.S., passengers are requested to write pertinent dates in the numeric "dd mm yy" format (e.g. "19 07 22").