Page 133 - How to write effective business English your guide to excellent professional communication by Fiona Talbot

122 How to Write Effective Business English

And both are in contrast with the format used in Japan, for exam-
ple, which is:

YY/MM/DD.

Not understanding the different conventions can create immense
problems. If you have to book international transport or hotel ac-
commodation, or arrange deliveries, meetings and so on, you’ll
know how important it is to input the correct dates. It can simply
be a question of house style regarding the format you choose to be
your default convention. But you may need to be flexible and un-
derstand that customers may be using a different convention.
Check if there’s any uncertainty. Sometimes be prepared to mirror
their convention, as long as it’s an acceptable version that makes
sense. Being in business should be about embracing customers’
needs, not about seeing them as ‘awkward’ if they do something
differently.
Examples that are all perfectly acceptable in UK English are:

21 January 2025;
21st January, 2025;

21 Jan 2025;
21st Jan 2025;
21/01/25.
As I mentioned, US English uses a month/day/year format, as do
some other countries. In this case, you would write:

January 21 2025;
01/21/25.

This particular date isn’t too problematic because we know that
there are not 21 months in a year. But where readers don’t un-
derstand the differences between the UK and US conventions,
they could have problems with a date such as 03/06/25. In the
UK this denotes 3 June 2025, but in the United States it denotes
6 March 2025.