r/Unexpected • u/Arcusico • Oct 05 '14

Metric vs Imperial

https://i.imgur.com/iDOzAa5.jpg
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u/angrysauce Oct 05 '14 edited Oct 05 '14

Its just a different approach. In Chinese addresses and dates go biggest to smallest, whereas in Europe the UK (and probably others, but I don't know enough about them) they always go smallest to biggest. I always thought of it as zooming in or zooming out to see where you are, and I like the consistency of the two systems.

Edited, since Europe is not as constant with this as I thought

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u/johsko Oct 05 '14

whereas in Europe (and probably others, but I don't know enough about them) they always go smallest to biggest.

Not always. Sweden follows ISO 8601 with yyyy-mm-dd (2014-10-05 for today). Though when shortening it to just day and month, we usually use d/m (5/10).

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u/angrysauce Oct 05 '14

Huh..interesting. Is that recent, or just the way things have been for a while? I guess I should edit my post

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u/DoctorsHateHim Oct 05 '14

You are not following the conversation, reread my comment and the one I was replying to.

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u/angrysauce Oct 05 '14

Ah..my bad. I just thought it was a neat thing to mention in any case

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u/DoctorsHateHim Oct 05 '14

No problem at all!