In this article we will see how to write the date in English. The date is written differently from Spanish and it is also different if we are going to write it in American English or British English. Among the main differences to Spanish we find the use of capital letters and also the order in which the months and days must be indicated, in addition to the fact that they are done in an abbreviated way.
Writing English correctly becomes as important as speaking it. In order to achieve this, we must begin to learn some basic aspects that will help us gain more ground in the language and work on it well.
If you want to have a written communication, something basic will be that you learn how to write the date correctly in English, so if you have any questions regarding this, we invite you to continue reading this article, since for many people this is not easy due to because its writing is different from the way it is done in other languages. To do it correctly, it is important to know the months in English, as well as the ordinal numbers and the seven days of the week. There are different structures to write the date, which will be used depending on the area, as we will see later.
Step one – the months of the year
First, it is important to know how to write each month in English, unlike in Spanish, these must always begin with a capital letter as if they were proper names, let’s look at how they are written:
- January is spelled January
- February is spelled February
- March is spelled March
- April is spelled April
- May is spelled May
- June is spelled June
- July is spelled July
- August is spelled August
- September is spelled September
- October is spelled October
- November is written November
- December is written December
Done, we already have how the twelve months of the year are written.
Step two – the days of the week
The days of the week, unlike in Spanish, must also be written with an initial capital letter as if they were proper names, let’s look at how the seven days of the week are written.
- Monday is written Monday
- Tuesday is spelled Tuesday
- Wednesday is written Wednesday
- Thursday is spelled Thursday
- Friday is spelled Friday
- Saturday is spelled Saturday
- Sunday is spelled Sunday
Step three – the ordinal numbers
To indicate the days of the months of the year, in English it is done with an ordinal number, that is, when we refer to first, third, fourth, among others, in Spanish we use this way of numbers from time to time and to refer to the dates we generally only use it for day one, when we say for example the first of May or the first of August, after this we continue with the cardinal numbers such as September 2 or October 4, but in English every day is written in ordinals in their abbreviated form.
Let’s see how the ordinal numbers are written with their respective abbreviation, remember that when you write the date in English you will use the corresponding abbreviations, which we will put in parentheses, we will look up to thirty-one, which are the maximum days that a month has.
- Primero: First (1st)
- Second: Second ( 2nd )
- Third (3rd)
- Cuarto: Fourth (4th)
- Fifth: Fifth (5 th )
- Sixth: Sixth. (6th)
- Seventh: Seventh (7th)
- Eighth: Eight (8 th )
- Ninth: Ninth (9th)
- Tenth: Tenth (10th)
- Eleventh: Eleventh (11th)
- Twelfth: Twelfth (12th)
- Thirteenth: Thirteenth (13th)
- Fourteenth: Fourteenth (14th)
- Fifteenth: Fifteenth (15 th )
- Sixteenth: Sixteenth (16 th )
- Seventeenth: Seventeenth (17 th )
- Eighteenth: Eighteenth (18 th )
- Nineteenth: Nineteenth (19 th )
- Twentieth: Twentieth (20 th )
- Twenty-first: Twenty first ( 21st )
- Twenty second: Twenty second ( 22nd )
- Twenty-third: Twenty third (23rd)
- Twenty-fourth: Twenty-fourth (24 th )
- Twenty fifth: Twenty fifth (25 th )
- Twenty-sixth: Twenty sixth (26 th )
- Twenty seventh: Twenty seventh (27 th )
- Twenty-eighth: Twenty eighth (28th)
- Twenty-ninth: Twenty Ninth (29th)
- Thirtieth: Thirtieth: Thirtieth (30th)
- Thirty-first: Thirty-first (31 st )
Step four – the years
In this sense there is no difference with Spanish so you don’t have to have any problem.
Step five – write the date
The first thing you must do is write the month completely and it must be in letters, do it according to the date you want to indicate, then you must put a comma and then you must put the day, remember that this must be in ordinal numbers in their form abbreviated and finally write the year using all the digits that must be four, just like you do in Spanish.
So we have that the order would be the following: the month, then the day and finally the year.
Examples: June, 19th, 2015, in Spanish this would be June 19, 2015, May, 6th, 1998, this in Spanish would be written May 6, 1998.
Step Six – Short Form
The date can also be written in an abbreviated way just like we do in Spanish, that is, for example 08/07/1983, there we would be indicating August 7, 1983. This will be useful in case you write a document which will go directed towards any country in the world that speaks English, except the United States.
Step Seven – US Short Form
When you are going to write a document for the United States and you want to put the abbreviated date, you must start with the month, then the day and finally the year, so then if we are going to put the same date that was indicated in the previous step it would be 08/ 07/1983 and it would also be August 7, 1983.
Step eight – the centuries
Unlike Spanish, these are not written in Roman numerals, they are done with ordinals:
Example: on the 6th century what in Spanish would be in the sixth century.
Step nine – date on letters
This should be written after the sender’s address, below it.
Step ten – the years
It is important to note that the years in English are pronounced differently before the year two thousand and after it.
Before two thousand, they must be divided into two tens, as follows:
Example: 1765 you should say seventeen sixty – five (seventeen sixty-five), which is not done in Spanish, so you don’t say One thousand seven hundred sixty – Five (one thousand seven hundred sixty-five).
After the year two thousand, this custom was lost and they began to always say it as we do in Spanish, although there are people who still continue dividing numbers.
Notes
If you are going to write documents that are informal, you can omit the letters that come after the number, that is, the ordinal would be removed, but it is always more convenient to do it in the manner described above.
If you are going to use prepositions when writing a date in the English language, it is important that you keep in mind which one you should use, for the years you should write in (in 2016), for the days you should write on (on 18th) and for the months of (of May).
With practice you will always be able to write the dates correctly.
The months could be abbreviated at the time of writing the date, let’s see how it is done.
- Jan: January.
- February: February
- Tue: March
- April: April
- May: May (has no abbreviation)
- June: June
- July: July
- Aug: August
- Sep: September
- October: October
- Nov: November
- December: December
We will indicate other words that are also related to dates so that you keep them in mind.
- Calendar: calendar
- Date: date
- A business day: working day
- Weekday: weekday
- Holidays: holidays
- Holiday: holiday
- Month: month
- Day: day
- Year: year
- Today: today
- Tomorrow: tomorrow
- Yesterday: yesterday.
- Winter: winter
- Autumn: fall or autumn
- Summer: summer
- Spring: Spring
- Weekend: weekend