Dates

Doesn't the rest of the English speaking world ever refer to today's date as "August twenty-fourth (or twenty-four), two thousand (and) seven"? Don't they sometimes write it as "August 24, 2007"? Maybe not. It's not something I've given a lot of thought to.

No, in the UK, Ireland, Australasia, India, and many etc. you'll often encounter the day/month format, making today the 24th of August. It's also common in Europe, where today might be expressed as 24/8, 24-8 or 24 VIII.

Which brings us back to the original question: the traditional usage "the 4th of July" indicates that this is how it would have been said back in 1776 and presumably for some years (decades?) after.

If Americans said the fourth of July in the late 18th century then it's reasonable to assume they must also have said the 21st of January, the 13th of April, and so on.

So when and why did they switch to the month/day format?

Ha! #2 beat me to it.

I suspect in Canada they use the American system, but that's a side issue.

Could the Americans have changed to month/day simply to differentiate themselves from the Brits, like the attempted spelling reforms started by Webster? That's what occurred to me at first, but I can't find any explanation for America's Great Date-Format Switch.

Lonelier Planet, I take it you still write publick and critick, so as not to fall victim to any of Webster's attempted spelling reforms.

In case it's not clear, in my first question in #1 I was referring to speech, not writing. Does the rest of Anglophonia never put the month before the day in speech?

We still say "the 24th of August" here (in speech; it would be very unusual in writing) but we also say "August 24th." I suspect that the normal US way of writing that date in numerals, 8/24/2007, came from that way of saying it. I don't know when that way of saying it arose; I had thought it was possible in England, without as I say ever having thought about it much. "August 24th" rather than "the 24th of August" does save a couple of syllables.

In writing, when we're writing out the name of the month, the common way of doing it is August 24, 2007, but you also see 24 August 2007.

I just looked at Samuel Pepys diary for 1661 and I see him using "January 2nd" etc., never, as far as I can tell from a quick glance, putting the day before the month.

So the question is when did that become impossible in Britain?

Perhaps I should make it clear that Samuel Pepys was English.

I don't think the problem is a verbal one -- whether you say August 24th or the 24th of August is irrelevant. What I tend to find confusing is the US habit of putting the month first when using numbers, eg. 9/11, which to me means November 9th.

The Pepys case indeed shows they used month-day in 17th-century England. But by 1776 Americans were obviously using day-month.

In principle, possible post-1776 scenarios include:

UK: day-month - US: day-month - the US later switched to month-day - but UK stayed with day-month

UK:both - US: both - the US later opted for for month-day - the UK later opted for day-month

UK: month-day - US: day-month - but UK switched to day-month - and the US switched to month-day

For what it's worth, a random search of two works of fiction with uncannily accurate reproductions of 19th-century British and American speech patterns (both written and oral) throw up these examples:

In the section of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas set ca 1850, he has the American character Adam Ewing dating his journal entries with day-month ("Wednesday, 13th November");

The series of 20 or so "Aubrey-Maturin" novels by Patrick O'Brian - set mostly on Royal Navy ships and entirely in the early years of the 19th century - has this example of a newspaper anouncement (from Post Captain): Mr Savile's hounds will meet at ten o'clock on Wednesday, the sixth of November 1802, at Champflower Cross.