Page 134 - How to write effective business English your guide to excellent professional communication by Fiona Talbot

Practical conventions and common confusions 123

International date format

This was devised to make the way we write dates internationally
understandable. It is based on the following format:

YYYY – MM – DD.

In this format, YYYY refers to all the digits (eg 2025), MM refers
to the month (01 to 12) and DD refers to the day (01 to 31).
When there is any doubt, it’s really useful to write your dates in
English this way.

Some confusions

Days and weeks

If you write ‘next Tuesday’, people can get confused as to whether
you’re referring to the first Tuesday that follows after the day you
wrote this – or whether you mean a Tuesday in another week. So,
as an example, if you write it on a Monday, is ‘next Tuesday’ the
following day (which I would take it to mean), or the Tuesday of
the following week? If you write it on a Friday, it is easier to see
that it would have to be the Tuesday of the following week.
‘This coming Tuesday’ has the same meaning as ‘next Tuesday’.
So do be careful. I know of instances where misunderstandings
about this have led to missed appointments. Ironically, the people
who misunderstand the correct use of the expression are the ones
who can get angry. Also, imagine the cost if you book foreign travel
for the wrong date. The best arrangement is always to write the
precise date you mean, for example: ‘next Tuesday, 4th November’.
‘In a couple of weeks’ literally means ‘in two weeks’, as ‘couple’
means ‘two’ in English. It is true that ‘a couple of weeks’ can be
used in a looser sense, meaning in about two weeks, but it’s best to
check. As another example, the Dutch expression ‘paar dagen’
means a few days, but the Dutch often wrongly translate this into
English as ‘a couple’, or ‘two’ days. So where orders are concerned,
it’s always best to clarify what is meant.