September the Tenth, or Tenth of September.

Both read well, and when we use shorthand we use a "/" in place of the/of.

It makes more sense to order consistently by unit. So day < month < year

month > day < year seems a bit silly.

I agree, but I think d/m/y is _equally_ silly.

YMD is clearly the thinking person's choice. It's the one that naturally sorts in lexicographic order, and also naturally extends to YMDHMS.

I agree it's a silly ordering. What dialect of English do you speak?

> September the Tenth

Even this sounds a little funny to my ears. In American English people say almost exclusively "September Tenth" in that order without any prepositions.

> In American English people say almost exclusively

As an Australian living in North America for seven years, my ears still daily pickup when the American dialect leaves out words.

Examples that come to mind: "Two hundred three", "Write me", "September tenth"

> "Two hundred three"

I'd be curious to hear you elaborate on this one. In American school, I learned that 'two hundred three' is the only acceptable version, but in casual speech people invariably say 'two hundred and three', which sounds more natural.

Which one do you say?

At least Australia and the UK correctly ( ;P ) use "two hundred and three".

There's a wealth of differences between British and American english: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_American_and_Bri... (Of particular relevance here is the numbers section.)

I concur. At least if the person is not saying something along the lines of

"On this date, the 10th of September, Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Twelve..."

> In American English people say almost exclusively "September Tenth" in that order without any prepositions.

Possibly regional, but I hear people say 10th of September quite often on the US West Coast. I would guess it has to do with the way we talk about the date... days in the future seem to follow the mm dd format while talking about the current date seems to follow dd of mm.

In Dutch we say: 'ten september' (also, we don't capitalize names of the month, see: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Capitalization#Capitalization...)

> And I think in other countries, it's said the other way around, right? "Today is the tenth of September?" That would actually be okay sounding in the U.S., too, though a little uncommon. Can you say "Today is tenth September"? That sounds very weird to me.

You mean in english? Because in portuguese we use cardinals to refer to days, and not ordinals. "Dez de setembro de 2012"—literally: "Ten of September of 2012." I'd guess it's the same in spanish.

I usually say "Today is the 10th/tenth of September".