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Let's have a look then. This is what the MHRA Style Guide says (p. 38): 8.1 DATES Dates should be given in the form ‘23 April 1564’. The name of the month should always appear in full between the day (‘23’ not ‘23rd’) and the year. No internal punctuation should be used except when a day of the week is mentioned, e.g. ‘Friday, 12 October 2001’. If it is necessary to refer to a date in both Old and New Styles, the form ‘11/21 July 1605’ should be used. For dates dependent upon the time of beginning the new year, the form ‘21 January 1564/5’ should be used. When referring to a period of time, use the form ‘from 1826 to 1850’ (not ‘from 1826–50’), ‘from January to March 1970’ (not ‘from January–March 1970’). In citations of the era, ‘bc’, ‘bce’, and ‘ce’ follow the year and ‘ad’ precedes it, and small capitals without full points are used: 54 bc, 54 bce, 367 ce, ad 367 With reference to centuries, all of these, including ‘ad’, follow: in the third century ad In references to decades, an s without an apostrophe should be used: the 1920s (not the 1920’s) In references to centuries the ordinal should be spelled out: the sixteenth century (not the 16th century) sixteenth-century drama In giving approximate dates circa should be abbreviated as c. followed by a space: c. 1490, c. 300 bc http://www.mhra.org.uk/Publications/Books/StyleGuide/download.shtml We were always taught that the correct way to give the date is: Tuesday the 13th of May 2008 But if that's too long winded why not just keep to the MHRA style guide? Believe it or not but there are British Standard guidelines and ISO standards for this sort of thing. Why not have a quick show of hands and then update the guidelines? I'm fond of 'st,' 'th,' and 'rd' myself but if they've got to go they've got go. All the best! Jon On Monday 12 May 2008 11:41:58 pm Andre Felipe Machado wrote: > Hello, > We need some british english proof reader(s) agreeing at what is the > correct formal british english date and time notations. > And register at the guidelines [0] and [1]. > Regards. > Andre Felipe > > [0] http://wiki.debian.org/ProjectNews/Guidelines > [1] http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Publicity/DebianTimesTeam/Guidelines |