ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades Your national date format

Perhaps there is only one Mike Trump? No risk of confusion, thus nobody has asked you for a #...

Being a number simplifies some things: For example my bank account is simply my number.
On the other hand, you sort of feel like an inmate...

Our drivers licenses in Britain incorporate the date of birth in the number.

They take the form AAAAA ymmddy ZZ#ZZ.

The first part is the first five letters of your last name. Next is your DoB, with the year split as shown. (Really subtle, eh? I bet they thought nobody would notice that! ). I believe that they add 50 to the month if the license belongs to a female.

The last part is your initials followed by another digit and two letters, which I assume are check digits of some sort.

Social security numbers don't seem to have any obvious coding in them, although there's probably some complex government system used. They take the form AA ## ## ## A (where A is any letter, # is any number).

But what happens if you want to open a second account?

Just look at how widely places demand an SSN in the U.S. these days. It's going that way here, too. Last time I opened a new bank account I couldn't believe how much information they wanted from me.

Mike,
Has New Zealand started using postal codes yet?

[Edited for typo in SSN format]

[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 04-05-2003).]

Paul,
Yes, we have, mine is 8300, I think.
However, I haven't sent a letter in ages,
takes far too long to reach it's destination.

While we're on postal-code formats, those used in the U.K. are very unusual.

They're written as two parts, e.g. NR27 9EJ. The first part is the "outward" code, used to get mailed letters to the correct regional sorting office. In this case the NR means Norwich region. NR1, NR2 etc. are actually within Norwich City, while the higher numbers cover the surrounding part of the country.

The second part is the "inward" code and narrows down the delivery address to within a single street, or a group of several houses. In theory, if you just wrote the postal code and house name/number, then a letter should get there.

The 4- or 5-figure codes used in Australia, France, etc. are much simpler! In the French system, for example, the first two digits of the postal code specify the "departement" (like a county). The same set of two-digit codes are found at the end of car license plate numbers, e.g. 16 = Charente, 75=Paris, etc.

Austrian postal codes are 4 digit. First digit is the region, 1 is Vienna, 2 and 3 lower Austria, 4 upper Austria, 5 Salzburg,...
Seond and third digit specify the region more closely, for example the district in Vienna. Last digit is the exact post office. 0 is the region's main or central post office.
So for example the 1st district, main post office is 1010. 1017 would specify a different post office. believed to speed up things, but I doubt it. 23rd district for example is 1230. Rural areas usually don't have the post office thing, they're mostly like 4720. These codes were introduced in 1965, prior to this only the bigger cities had postal codes (I only know about Vienna, they used a 2 digit system that didn't correspond to the districts), all smaller cities were just city + state.
So the correct way to address an international letter is like this:
Joe Average
Hauptstrasse 17/3 (=house number + apartment)
A 4710 Wildbach
Austria
(or Autriche, french is very common for postal affairs)
(Hauptstrasse means High Street, a very common name, postal code and city are freely invented)

Paul,
I've always wondered about the postcodes in the UK, thanks for that explanation!.

I've never quite understood why Irish newspapers seem to always use the US style long date format on the top of each page. E.g. April 6, 2003 but we always use the Day/Month/Year format for short dates. For companies who regularly deal with North American clients it's normal to always write the month in letters to avoid confusion even in short format dates.

15/JUL/2003 or 15 / JULY / 2003 usually shortened to 3 letters.

At least that way there's no risk of confusing people.

As for times, just like the UK, people very rarely speak in the 24 hour system or even say am or pm.

If it's 16:00 it's 4 O'Clock or if you want to be really specific "4 in the afternoon". If you said it's "sixteen hundred hours" people would think you were pretty weird.

Although our voicemail system insists on calling out times like this "This message was left at 15 hours 32" (Must be French (alcatel or something) )

Post codes in the Republic of Ireland were never implemented at all! I think we're the only country in the EU not to use them. Addresses are usually in the "house name number", Street, Town, County. Format.

Dublin and Cork, being larger cities have delivery zones.. So you get addresses ending in Dublin 3 or Cork 4 etc.

The communications regulation agency (a bit like the US FCC) which has now got responsibilities for regulating the postal services, as well as electronic communications seems to be determined to introduce them as they see the Post Offices incrediably complex computerised sorting system which works using a form of fuzzy logic to machine read non-codified addresses and its extensive local knowledge as a huge barrier to entry into the postal market. It also hinders marketing companies etc. It's much easier to provide a postal service using codes than trying to sort millions of items with "traditional" addresses.

The non-codified system doesn't seem to hinder An Post / Letterpost (The Post Office)'s ability to rapidly deliver and sort mail though. Pretty much guarenteed 1 day delivery to anywhere in Ireland. Post a letter at anytime before 10pm (at a main post office, by the collection time on the box elsewhere) and it will arrive overnight at the address. Doesn't seem to hinder the use of computerised sorting either.
I think the addresses are "friendlier" too, much more human!.

That time format "15 hours 32" definitely sounds as though it's an English translation from a Continental system. Ranger, don't you use a similar form in German? (e.g. "funfzehn Uhr zwei-und-dreizig.")

The U.K. postal codes were introduced about 30 years ago. Like Ireland, we already had "zones" for the larger cities, e.g. Liverpool 4, Birmingham 2. These were incorporated in to the new codes, e.g. L4 xxx, B2 xxx.

London had multiple codes indicating the region of the city: N, NW, W, E, SW, SE, WC, EC (the last two being West Central and East Central). Again, these designations were kept and extra digits added in the new system. Note that NE and S were never used; the new system uses these codes for places very much removed from London (Newcastle and Sheffield!).

By the way, the term "ZIP" code in America comes from Zone Improvment Plan, which similarly incorporated big city zones into the new numbers, e.g. New York 17, became 10017.

Writing the house number after the street name seems to be quite a common central/eastern European thing. I've seen it that way on Russian and other former Iron-Curtain countries as well.

*envy*
Mail delivery in Austria and Germany is hell. A letter within Vienna usually takes 3 days, if you're very lucky it arrives within 2 days. When a letter is posted monday morning and arrives on tuesday this is a plain miracle.
All letters posted after 16:00 will be delivered as if they had been posted the next morning, except for they're posted at the GPO. Nearly all roadside mail boxes are emptied once a day, at 4 pm.
After the central computerized sorting center was opened things got even worse. After the opening thousands of letters were just stuck and delivered after weeks, in some areas they had to deliver on saturdays to get anywhere near schedule. By now this has gone back to routine.
Oh yes, most of the postmen are the worst and most stupid idiots I ever encountered. A typical view in apartment houses are piles of letters atop the mail boxes, they were put in the wrong mail box and the owner of the mail box put them up for the recipient.
Yes, Fuenfzehn Uhr Zweiunddreissig is the German/Austrian time format. However, if you ask somebody you'll probably hear: Half four or 2 past half four. For extended clarification "in the morning" and "in the afternoon" is added. The 24 hour format is mostly used for writing and on digital clocks.

We Swedes don't have post offices anymore. They were closed last year in an effort to save money. Yes, really! Now we have a rudimentary mail service at shops instead.

Postal codes are five digit: XXX XX. 1X XXX is the Stockholm area and for each digit it zooms in on an area. With all digits in place, you're down to just a few streets.

Paul,
opening a bank account isn't very hard. I have three, two of which I don't know the number of. Each time I have to hand the teller my driver's license and ask him/her to find the account number for me.