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Date and time notation in Australia

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Date and time notation in Australia [refresh]
Full date5 August 2024
All-numeric date05/08/2024
Time6:01 am

The date and time in Australia are most commonly recorded using the day–month–year format (5 August 2024) and the 12-hour clock (6:01 am), although 24-hour time is used in some cases. For example, some public transport operators such as V/Line[1] and Transport NSW[2] use 24-hour time, although others use 12-hour time instead.

Date

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Australians typically write the date with the day leading, as in the United Kingdom and New Zealand:

  • 5 August 2024
  • 05/08/2024

The month–day–year order (August 5, 2024) is sometimes used, often in the mastheads of magazines, schools, newspapers,[3][4] advertisements, video games, news, and TV shows. Month–day–year in numeric-only form (08/05/2024) is rarely used.

The ISO 8601 date format (2024-08-05) is recommended by the government to be used when communicating internationally.[5] It is also commonly used in software.

The Australian government identifies Monday as the first day of the week,[6] which is consistent with the Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR) since its October 2021 release.[7] However, there is disagreement among the general population over whether Monday or Sunday is the first day of the week.[8]

Weeks are most identified by the last day of the week, either the Friday in business (e.g., "week ending 19/1") or the Sunday in other use (e.g., "week ending 21/1"). Week ending is often abbreviated to "W/E" or "W.E." The first day of the week or the day of an event are sometimes referred to (e.g., "week of 15/1"). Week numbers (as in "the third week of 2007") are not often used, but may appear in some business diaries in numeral-only form (e.g., "3" at the top or bottom of the page). ISO 8601 week notation (e.g. 2024-W31) is not widely understood.[citation needed]

Time

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The Australian government recommends using the 12-hour clock (6:01 am), except where the 24-hour clock is more helpful in the context, such as in travel, scientific fields and the military.[5] The government also recommends a colon as the separator; however, the single period is still used in some contexts.[5] They also suggest writing the noon/after noon qualifier as "am" or "pm" in lower-case without periods.[5]

References

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  1. ^ "Why do you use 24-hour time?". V/Line - Regional public transport for Victoria. Retrieved 24 April 2024.
  2. ^ "New South Wales Train Link Timetable for the North Western Region". transportnsw.info. 1 July 2023. Retrieved 5 April 2024.
  3. ^ "Latest News". News Corp Australia. Archived from the original on 4 November 2017. Retrieved 4 November 2017.
  4. ^ "The West Australian Demo". The West Australian. 16 August 2016. Archived from the original on 1 September 2017. Retrieved 4 November 2017.
  5. ^ a b c d "Dates and time". Australian Government Style Manual. 17 October 2023.
  6. ^ "Dates and time". Australian Government Style Manual. 28 March 2024. Retrieved 27 April 2024.
  7. ^ "Unicode CLDR - CLDR 40 Release Note". cldr.unicode.org. 27 October 2021. Retrieved 24 April 2024.
  8. ^ Lyons, Gabrielle (17 August 2019). "Sunday Vs Monday: Which day do you consider the start of the week?". ABC News. Retrieved 24 April 2024.