Date & Time Formats

NSC’s standard date format for administrative website posts and pages is yyyy-mm-dd, when presented in numerical format. This format avoids the ambiguity and confusion between the formats dd-mm-yyyy and mm-dd-yyyy for dates in the first 12 days of the month; a text sort of such dates will also sort any list containing them in chronological order.

Appropriate date & time formats for post titles:

When the date is included in the body of a post, it is appropriate and common practice to spell out the month and day. In the title however, we want to abbreviate to take advantage of the limited space. We also minimize punctuation to make it simple and clean looking.

Here is how to format the date and time – if used – in a post title:

• Follow the post title with a dash ” – ” with spaces on either side.
• Include the day of the week unless the event spans more than one day.
• The day of the week is abbreviated to three letters only but no period:
  Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
• Separate day, month, date and time with commas.
• The month is abbreviated with three letters but with no period:
  Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
• Use cardinal numbers only (1, 2, 3); not ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd.).
• The year is not normally included, as the current year is usually obvious.
• If a time is included, it follows the date, is in 12-hour format and is not followed by “Hours”.
• “am” and “pm” are written in lower case
• If an event is for a specified duration, it may be shown as, for example, “2 – 4 pm” or 2 – 4:30 pm”, where the dash has a space on either side and “am” and “pm” have no periods.

Examples:

• Fall Information Meeting – Wed, Dec 6, 7:30 pm
• Commercial Launch – Sat, May 7
• Join us for NOD – Jun 18-19
• PHRF Sail Measuring and Racing Q&A Session – Sun, Apr 24, 1 – 4 pm
• Race Practice Sessions – Fridays, May 20, 27 and June 3, 5 pm

Examples of how multi-day events may be shown include:
“Jun 18-19”; “May 20, 27 and Jun 3”; “Apr 15 – May 20”.

While there is nothing wrong or grammatically incorrect with some alternate date and time formats, we strive to be consistent, as inconsistent formatting does not present the professional look that we desire for our website.