Date and Time in localization

Different countries have their different ways of writing the date and time. A date can be written as August 11, 2008, or 08/11/08 or 11/08/08, or 2008-08-11, or 11 August 2008, etc.

So many ways of writing the same date and sometime it can be very confusing.

If you receive a French document or visit a French website you might see a date in this form 11/08/08 and think is something about November 08, 2008 when actually it refers to August 11, 2008.This is because in France, the numeric form for dates has the day first.

ISO - the International Organization for Standardization - recommends using this format to avoid the errors and confusion: YYYY-MM-DD.

United States :
Date:
mm/dd/yy - 08/11/08; or August 11, 2008
Time:
12-hour notation system is default in USA

Australia:
Date:
d/m/yyyy - 11/08/2008;
Both American and British forms are common: August 11, 2008 or 11 August 2008
Time:
12-hour notation system is default in Australia: e.g.: 10:30 pm or 10.30 pm

Most European countries:
Date:
dd/mm/yy or dd/mm/yyyy; e.g.: 11/08/08 or 11/08/2008
or fully written day-month-year form: e.g.: 11 août 2008 (French)
Time:
24-hour notation system is used: e.g. 10:30 pm will be display as 22:30

Brazil:
Date:
dd/mm/yyyy or dd/mm/yy, or d/m/yy e.g.: 11/08/08 or 11/08/2008
or fully written day-month-year form: e.g.: 11 de Agosto de 2008
Time:
24-hour notation system is used; e.g. formal writing 10h30min; informal writing: 22:30

Canada:
Date:
Canadian Standard Association recommends using day-month-year form, however most of the time the form used is month-day-year.
Time:
12-hour clock is used. However, French speakers will use also the 24-hours clock

China:
Date:
Yea-month-day is the date format in China. e.g.: 2008-08-11 or 2008.08.11 for August 11, 2008.
Chinese characters for year, month and day can also be used as separators; e.g. August 11, 2008 will be 2008年8月11日
Time:
Both the 12-hour and 24-hour clock are used by Chinese people.