ECN Forum
Posted By: pauluk Your national date format - 04/01/03 03:26 PM
A non-electrical question for all our international members: What's the generally used method for writing dates in your country?

I think that everybody here will have realized that the normal American format is month/day/year, so today, April 1, 2003 would be written 4-1-03 or 4/1/03.

In the U.K., the format is day/month/year, the most usual punctuation being a dash, dot, or slash, i.e. 1-4-03, 1.4.03, 1/4/03.

I believe that the order is the same throughout Western Europe, but I've sometimes seen dates from the Continent written with Roman numerals for the month, e.g. 1-iv-03. I don't know how common this is.
Posted By: C-H Re: Your national date format - 04/01/03 04:55 PM
The Swedish and only logical way to write today's date is:

2003-04-01

If you want to specify what time it is simply write 18.55 (or "kl. 18.55" if it isn't obvious that it's time)

The "Posted" field would in the Swedish format have read: 2003-04-01 18.55

In handwriting the date is often written as: 1/4 or 1/4-03 Not as logical, but more in line with the British way of writing it.

BTW: Are you guys on Daylight savings time?

{Edited twice to change the year from 2002 and 2004 to 2003. [Linked Image]}

[This message has been edited by C-H (edited 04-01-2003).]
Posted By: SvenNYC Re: Your national date format - 04/01/03 05:17 PM
When my time came to enlist in the US Military (I was rejected due to extremely bad myopia), all the paperwork was filled:

YY/MM/DD
Posted By: Trumpy Re: Your national date format - 04/02/03 06:00 AM
Paul,
We have just returned to Non-Daylight-saving
time, sure knocks you around a wee bit, too.
We write our date dd/mm/yyy.
It can get a bit confusing, if you are talking about a day earlier on in the year,
for example, 04/03/2003, is it the 3rd of April 2003 or the 4th of March?. [Linked Image]
Wish the system was the same everywhere!. [Linked Image]
Posted By: Texas_Ranger Re: Your national date format - 04/02/03 08:03 AM
2. 4. 2003, 2. 4. 03, 02. 04. 2003
10:01 Uhr.
2. IV. 2003 is very oldfashioned.
On invoices etc. sometimes also 03/04/02 or with hyphens instead of the slashes. Personally I prefer the first version, without the leading zero.
Posted By: pauluk Re: Your national date format - 04/02/03 03:27 PM
Interesting. I think there are one or two other places (Japan?) which use YY/MM/DD as well.

On the time format, the U.K. is kind of middleground. The 24-hour clock is used much more commonly than in the United States (on bus and train timetables, for example), but not as often as in Europe. You won't hear people talk about going home at 18 hours, like you might in Europe, for example.

Ranger,
You sometimes use Y/M/D on invoices? Isn't that rather confusing? How could somebody know whether 03/04/02 is April 3, 2002 or April 2, 2003? [Linked Image]

C-H,
Yes, the U.K. went onto daylight savings (British Summer Time) last weekend. Changes back the end of October.
Posted By: Texas_Ranger Re: Your national date format - 04/02/03 06:03 PM
No idea. I can only rember getting a laughing fit when I first saw "96-11-03". Probably the only way to distinguish are the hyphens instead of the dots.
We changed to daylight savings in the night from saturday to sunday. One lost hour of sleep, ugh!
Posted By: pauluk Re: Your national date format - 04/02/03 10:00 PM
Not a problem last century, I guess. Only rrom for confusion since 2001!

Boy, it seems weird talking about 19xx being "last century." [Linked Image]
Posted By: C-H Re: Your national date format - 04/04/03 11:49 AM
Oh, one other way of writing dates in Sweden is used for writing date of birth: yymmdd

Our SSN or ID number is based on this: Date of birth plus four digits making up a checksum and indicating gender.

Thus a boy born today would get a number something like this 030404-0118

(I haven't calculated the checksum, so it's most likely not a real number)

This number is used instead of your name everywhere: Tax authority, education, medical care, you name it.
Posted By: Trumpy Re: Your national date format - 04/04/03 11:56 AM
C-H,
Is that a Social Security Number?.
It's strange but we don't have them over here, maybe we do and I don't have one!.
Posted By: C-H Re: Your national date format - 04/04/03 02:34 PM
Perhaps there is only one Mike Trump? No risk of confusion, thus nobody has asked you for a #... [Linked Image]

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...
Posted By: pauluk Re: Your national date format - 04/04/03 05:11 PM
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! [Linked Image] ). 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).

Quote
Being a number simplifies some things: For example my bank account is simply my number.
But what happens if you want to open a second account? [Linked Image]

Quote
On the other hand, you sort of feel like an inmate...
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? [Linked Image]

[Edited for typo in SSN format]

[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 04-05-2003).]
Posted By: Trumpy Re: Your national date format - 04/04/03 11:42 PM
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. [Linked Image]
Posted By: pauluk Re: Your national date format - 04/05/03 08:37 AM
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.
Posted By: Texas_Ranger Re: Your national date format - 04/05/03 03:49 PM
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)
Posted By: Trumpy Re: Your national date format - 04/06/03 07:04 AM
Paul,
I've always wondered about the postcodes in the UK, thanks for that explanation!. [Linked Image]
Posted By: djk Re: Your national date format - 04/06/03 09:13 AM
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!.
Posted By: pauluk Re: Your national date format - 04/06/03 10:19 AM
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.
Posted By: Texas_Ranger Re: Your national date format - 04/06/03 11:32 AM
Quote
Pretty much guarenteed 1 day delivery to anywhere in Ireland.

*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.
Posted By: C-H Re: Your national date format - 04/06/03 07:32 PM
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.
Posted By: djk Re: Your national date format - 04/06/03 10:56 PM
The Irish Post Office, An Post operates the most extensive post office network I've seen anywhere and it's becoming increasingly difficult to justify it although any attempts to roll it back results in major protests, particularly in rural areas.

The Post offices, recently re-branded "postshop(tm)" actually provide a lot of services here other than mail:

1) Mail / fast package delivery
2) Post Office Bank
3) Full social welfare system access, including welfare payments are done through the post offices.
4) AIB (our largest retail bank) offers full banking service over the counter in any post office.
5) Bill payment, they accept payment for almost every conceivable bill.
6) Travel agency and booking system for a number of airlines, including Ryanair.
7) They own and operate the national lottery system.
8) Retail items: Stationary, cards, mobile phone top ups etc etc.
9) they also offer their own financial service products (insurance etc) and credit card.
10) the point of access for processing of passports if you don't want to go to the Passport Office and queue.

In order to keep the network of offices open they had to seriously step up the no of services.
Posted By: pauluk Re: Your national date format - 04/07/03 10:00 PM
The Post Office in Britain also handles many of these things: Girobank bank accounts, bill payments, cashing welfare checks, and so on, although in the latter case they are trying to force everybody into having payments made directly into an account.

The P.O. here also issues vehicle licenses (the disk attached to the windshield upon payment of the annual tax) and TV licenses. Along with the bill payments idea they also issue savings stamps for telephone, electricity, and TV licenses.

We also have the concept of the "Sub Post Office," which is generally a small area and counter set aside for the purpose within a small village store so that people have access to postal services while picking up other essential provisions.

Many of the smaller sub-Post Offices are gradually closing, leaving a lot of people without easy access to services, especially the elderly in rural areas without easy access to transport (public transport here has also become a joke, but that's another story!).
Posted By: djk Re: Your national date format - 04/08/03 10:17 AM
Yeah we've inherited the sub post office idea too. They're generally staying open and An Post is under HUGE politically pressure to keep them open. Most, but not all, are fully computerised and can thus offer the full range of services. Adding AIB (our largest bank) banking services and various other things has made them a lot more viable as AIB is desperate to roll back its own branch network and as the post office has fully computerised "bank-like" offices located at almost everywhere in the country the banks, credit card companies, airlines etc have seen them as a really cost effective way of providing proxy-branches. They've basically installed a very open & flexible computerised transaction system that can be set up to handle transactions for any third party via a simple touch screen interface and barcoding/swipe/smartcard readers. Any self-respecting "Post Master" or "Post Mistress" can handle it [Linked Image]

They've also extended their reach by adding thousands of "PostPoints" which are basically easy to use POS terminals installed in small shops, supermarkets etc that give access to bill payment, lodgement and withdrawal from various banks (ATM card and PIN pad access only), mobile top up, basic postal services etc. So your average news agent or petrol station can accept payment for your Electricity bill via the post office system.

and "Billpay.ie" which is a fully integrated bill payment system. You register all of your bills (cable, phone, electricity, gas, credit cards, etc etc) and the system accesses the various companies databases, keeps you up to date with what's outstanding.. issues you with email reminders and accepts payment online as a single credit/debit card payment or with a swipe card at a post office / post point as cash/card/cheque. Basically a bill consolidation system.

They even went as far as rebranding as "Post TS" (TS = Transaction Services)

It was an ideal use for a huge retail network that was gradually becoming obsolete.
Posted By: djk Re: Your national date format - 04/08/03 10:32 AM
on the time format thing ... the public voicemail network is of French origin [Linked Image] hence the "this message was left at 18 hours 23 from "name".. (dix-huit heures vingt trois.. written "18h23")
Cool system though, most people have a mailbox on the public network, so if you phone someone and leave a message it will go message from ""John Murphy", mailbox : 021 999 9999.. to reply press 88 to return a call press 89" etc..
Posted By: Texas_Ranger Re: Your national date format - 04/08/03 03:33 PM
Here in Austria Post Office bank, lottery, sale of A1 cell phones (Post, Telekom and Mobilkom are actually one company),...
Oh yes, they just started developing photos here.
Posted By: jdevlin Re: Your national date format - 04/08/03 06:09 PM
In Canada we mostly use mm/dd/yy except Quebec(french) they use dd/mm/yy.
If you want to be able to sort them easy on a computer you should use YY/MM/DD. You don't need any special calcs for them to come in the proper order including year that way.
Many place use 4 digit year since 2000.
Posted By: Trumpy Re: Your national date format - 04/09/03 08:25 AM
We used to have "Post Office Savings Banks",
when I was a young fella, they were closed down in 1985, along with a lot of the Post Offices that held them.
We now have what is called a Post Shop, that (obviously) sells stamps, but it also has a Bank(called Kiwi-Bank).
You can pay your power and phone bills there
and all manner of other bills, even Court fines!, if you must. [Linked Image]
Talk about re-inventing the wheel!, we could have saved a whole heap of time and money, if we had just left it alone, at the start. [Linked Image]
Posted By: pauluk Re: Your national date format - 04/09/03 05:52 PM
Quote
Talk about re-inventing the wheel!, we could have saved a whole heap of time and money, if we had just left it alone, at the start.
Hear hear! Doesn't that apply to just about everything in which the government gets involved?! [Linked Image]
Posted By: pauluk Re: Your national date format - 06/09/03 10:06 PM
Reviving an old thread here, I scanned through this discussion about time and date formats, postal codes, etc. and realized that there is one other area we didn't cover earlier.

Here in Britain, along with just about every other English-speaking country, we use a period as a decimal point, e.g. 12.5 for twelve-and-a-half. We also commonly use a comma as a thousands separator, e.g. 12,500 for twelve thousand five hundred.

But most of you on the Continent do this the other way round, don't you? Every European paper I can ever recall seeing uses a comma for a decimal point and either a period or a space as a thousands separator.

Are there any countries in Continental Europe which don't adhere to this convention? It all seems very strange to those of us who grew up in Anglo-Saxon countries.


[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 06-09-2003).]
Posted By: C-H Re: Your national date format - 06/11/03 12:55 PM
We Swedes write 2,000 when the English speakers would have written 2.000 and 2 000 when they would have used 2,000

(Yes, specifying 2 down to the third decimal is rather unusual, but you sometimes find in lab reports and the like.)

I personally find 2.000 and 2 000 to be the easiest to read. Perhaps I can start my own system?
Posted By: Hutch Re: Your national date format - 06/12/03 05:33 PM
For many a year I have customized my computer number format to using a decimal point with a space as a thousand separator.

For hours and minutes I prefer the format ‘18h30’ though I cannot persuade my computer to use this form. Revolutionary France supposedly had decimal time at some point. Does anybody know more about this or how long it lasted? Millidays have a certain je ne sais quoi!

For the record, South Africa officially used the date format yyyy-mm-dd but most people wrote dd-mm-yyyy. The decimal comma was also official though Bill Gates had thankfully made this less common due to computers demanding decimal points on entry.
Posted By: classicsat Re: Your national date format - 06/13/03 03:19 AM
In Canada:
Traditionally, commas are used to delimit thousands, a decimal point to delimit fractions of a unit.
In official parlance, spaces are often used
instead of commas.

Time is usually 12 hrs, with a colon between
Hrs/Mins, although I am well versed in 24H time (when I can, I choose clocks that can show 24H time, or modify them so they
do.) I think in French Canada that use the continental European format for time/date.

Of note, is the European standard of
displaying values of electronics,
EG 1R5 is a 1.5 ohm resistor, 2K2 is 2200 Ohms.
Posted By: djk Re: Your national date format - 06/13/03 08:24 PM
Here in Ireland we're starting to see problems with the use of commas and periods/fullstops in Euro prices.

(? = E as some character sets don't display ? properly yet)

Price = 2 euro 99 cent

Ireland: E 2.99
Elsewhere: 2,99 E

Generally for amounts in thousands it's far safer to avoid comma usage completely and use spaces.

e.g. E 2 000.69 can't be confused.

There's also a weird convention in Ireland that "Euro" and "Cent" have no plural (i.e. "2 euro and 15cent, not 2 euros and 15 cents). Apparently the logic being that they should be pan european words and not suffixed with various plural endings (s/en/i/es etc)

Does that apply elsewhere too?

Also the position of the Euro Symbol (?) ... We always put £ before the amount but many other countries put their symbol after the amount and are continuing to write Euro prices the same way e.g. 2,99 E(?)

...

On another convention phone numbers. The french style systems always throw me. i.e. 01.23.45.67.89

Here we tend to have 012 345 6789 and for some reason it's easier to remember in those clumps.

You also tend to get no's like 012 200 3000 (oh one two, two hundred three thousand) for business' main numbers.

1-800 XXXXXXX (one eight hundred)

The weird one in ireland is the premium rate nos.

e.g. 1550 22 99 00 (fifteen fifty, twenty two ninty nine, double zero)

Increasingly letters are being used in 1-800/1-850 and premium rate numbers as well as SMS lines.

e.g. 1-800 EIRCOM or 1-800 AER LINGUS.. seems to allow flexible number lengths to cope with names.
Posted By: Hutch Re: Your national date format - 06/13/03 08:45 PM
Djk,

You're right about the character set issue. ECN's does not include the euro symbol.

South Africa's Rand (R before the numbers) has no plural too. The cents do but are next to worthless. RSA should do an Australia and get rid of the 1c and 2c coins.

Is the French system anything to do with saying "four-twenties,ten,nine" for 99? I can't imagine saying that with a doctor's spatula on my tongue [Linked Image]
Posted By: pauluk Re: Your national date format - 06/14/03 09:35 AM
I hadn't thought about that euro issue, but I suppose it's logical that those countries that have always put their currency symbol after the amount would just continue to do so with the new currency.

I generally write times with a colon separator, e.g. 10:15, but a lot of British publishers prefer to use 10.15 instead. Some use only a single digit for the minutes when they're below ten, e.g. 2.0 for two o'clock or 4.5 for five past four. That always looks very strange to me, and I would write 2:00 or 4:05 (followed by am or pm, if required).

Maybe Ragner can confirm this, but I seem to recall from my classes of long ago that in German the half hour is worked out a different way. In English, 5:30 would be "half past five," but I think the Germans phrase it as "half before six" or something like that.

It's amazing how many variations one can find for something so relatively simple! Even in Britain, many people would not understand the American form such as "It's ten of two."

On those French phone numbers, they not only write them in pairs but they also read them out as though each were a separate number, e.g. 23.45.67.89 is "vingt-trois, quarante-cinq.." etc. (i.e. twenty-three, forty-five....)

The standard form for phone numbers here has always been that anything from 3 to 6 digits are written in one block: 234567. Seven-digit numbers have always been split as 3/4, as in 222 1234, and the new 8-digit numbers are written as two blocks of four, e.g. 7222 1234.

The old GPO had an "official" way to read out certain numbers where there were double/triple digits. For example, 3000 would be spoken as "three, oh, double oh." One or two operators would even get quite school-marm-ish if anyone dared to ask for "three, triple oh" or (horror of horrors [Linked Image]) "three thousand." A number such as 22222 using their style would be "two, double two, double two."


Quote
Of note, is the European standard of
displaying values of electronics,
EG 1R5 is a 1.5 ohm resistor, 2K2 is 2200 Ohms.
That format has gradually crept into British usage since the 1970s as well, although I'm not keen on it myself. The "nano" prefix (most often used on capacitance values) started to be used about the same time as well and is now very common here, e.g. 10nF instead of 0.01uF.

[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 06-14-2003).]
Posted By: djk Re: Your national date format - 06/14/03 02:15 PM
Paul:

Eircom always automatically announces numbers with a pause / stressed number at each block of nos.

They seem to have dropped announcing "double-zero" etc. I guess it could confuse non-native English speakers and complicates things generally.

the format here is :

5-digit: 099 22 222 (Being phased out)
6-digit: 099 222 222 (Being phased out)
or 7-digit: 099 222 2222
8-digit is only used for voicemail by prefixing the no with 5 so it's written as 099 5 222 2222

There are also a few non-standard area codes left.
01 - Dublin (takes in more than 1/3 of the countrys population!)
and a few 0X0X codes (all gone this year)
No idea what, if anything, will be done with Dublin's code. I think it will be changed to 03X as it runs out of numbering space.

They also suggest that you don't put the area code in brackets anymore as for years it has made no difference wheather you dial it or omit it in you own area.
Posted By: Trumpy Re: Your national date format - 06/15/03 03:12 AM
Paul,
I work with a Dutch Electrician from time to time.
And he uses the comma instead of a decimal point.
As an aside, Paul, my keyboard has a Euro sign on it, next to the number 5 key, as well as a % sign, how is this used?.
Posted By: pauluk Re: Your national date format - 06/15/03 11:48 AM
The "official" way of writing phone numbers has changed over the years here. Before the days of STD (Subscriber Trunk Dialing), it was just exchange and number, e.g. Derby 23456.

When STD came in, the GPO recommended adding the code but still listing the exchange name, like this:

Derby (0DE2) 23456

When letters were dropped, that would become:

Derby (0332) 23456

The reason was that callers in the local area did not use the STD code but would instead have to dial a local routing code, so they needed the exchange name in order to look it up on the list.

The national format for showing how to dial to a small dependent exchange could look quite odd. For example, a village named Zelah near to where I once lived had to be accessed via the STD code of its group switching center, which was Truro (0872).

Anyone in Truro could call Zelah by dialing 54 plus the local 3-digit number, so the format for showing a Zelah number was:

Zelah (0872 54) 234.

The six big cities (London, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, and Manchester) with 7-digit numbers generally had numbers listed with the STD code followed by a dash, e.g. 01-222 1234.

These days, the exchange names have pretty much been dropped and just the area code and local number given, e.g. (01692) 585000, or just 01692 585000. Many people now probably don't even know the name of their local CO.

As you said for Ireland, our network now will accept the full number and recognize it as a local call, even if you start by dialing your own area code.

Trumpy,
The British PC-style keyboards have some peculiar variations. The pound sterling sign (£) is located on shifted-3, and the # sign has is moved to an extra key over near the right hand side. For some peculiar reason, they also have " and @ the opposite way around to American keyboards, along with a few other minor changes.

The British variants also retained the original PC keyboard quirk of having the backslash (\) key located between the left-hand shift and Z. The American versions corrected that when the AT keyboard came out, thank goodness. I use an American-layout keyboard on my systems, and when I have to use a British one one someone else's system I'm always getting extra \ characters where I've gone for the left shift key.

The keyboards on sale here now have added the euro symbol to the top right of the 4 key, next to the dollar sign. I think its use will depend upon your keyboard configuration and code page settings.
Posted By: djk Re: Your national date format - 06/15/03 03:52 PM
There are still a few slightly different versions of keyboards used here in Ireland and the Euro symbol has been added now too.

There are still slight differences to how Apple and PC manufactures layout the keyboard too.

E.g. The majority of UK Mac keyboards don't have a # key at all. It's alt+3 and ? (euro) is alt+2 (marked out on the keyboard)
Posted By: djk Re: Your national date format - 06/15/03 04:14 PM
Re Phone nos:

Some people here will still insist on saying "Dublin 777 7777" or just 777 7777 rather than 01 - 777 7777. Up until the mid-90s most Dubliners didn't seem to think they even had an area code it was only with the advent the massive uptake of mobile phones that they realised that (01) exsisted!

(There are now substantialy more GSM mobile lines than fixed lines! IRL has one of the highest mobile penetration rates in the world)

It's beginning to cause a lot of confusion as Dublin and Cork are no longer the only areas with 7-Digits so having just the local number on stationary won't automatically mean people dial 01 or 021.

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Some eircom switches (and those of other companies) actually accept the full international format number too. GSM networks have always done this.

E.g. if your number was 021 888 8888 you could dial 00 353 21 888 8888 and it will go thru and be charged as local rate.
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There's also the weird shortcut for Northern Ireland here. It originated from a need to identify NI calls as "national" for billing reasons. I presume that the old Xbar switches actually routed calls over the boarder rather than across the channel and back again. There is also a huge volume of cross-boarder calls so I guess it would have been useful to treat it as normal trunk traffic than as International. Until recently you simply prefixed the old NI area code with 08. E.g. Belfast was 01232 so you dialled 0801232.

NI = 028 in the UK (+44 28) and 8-Digit number.

From the Republic of Ireland you simply replace 028 with 048. Actually intergrates NI into the geographical North East area code system (04)

You can also dial 00 44 28 and will be charged at "National Rate" Some old (private) payphones etc can have problems with that though.

+ 353 48 XXXX XXXX doesn't exsist from abroad though.

Access to GB was also via 03 + area code until sometime in the 90s when the shortcode was phased out under some EU / ITU rule.

Did that exsist in other countries ? (other than places like Andora / Monaco) E.g. between the Benelux countries or in Scandinavia?

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There is a slow but defintate migration here to a standardised number length etc.

0XX - XXX-XXXX

They've also created a voicemail numbering space simply by prefixing the area code with 03
E.g. the mailbox for 021 999 9999 is 03021 999 9999

(Previously these numbers would have been network specific and hidden in the case of fixed lines or accessed by prefixing the local no with 5 in mobiles.)

Eircom provides free voicemail to all customers who want it. (They make more money when there is no busy tone and all call attempts are answered)

They insist on calling Voicemail "Call Answering" though! (Rather strange name). It rolled out in about 1992/3.

It's quite sophisticated, logs caller ID details etc, accepts SMS messages and reads them out if you don't have an SMS capable home phone. Allows messaging between mailboxes, forwarding messages etc etc.. pretty much like a fancy office system.

Kinda handy if you don't wanna talk to someone though [Linked Image]

[This message has been edited by djk (edited 06-15-2003).]
Posted By: C-H Re: Your national date format - 06/15/03 06:28 PM
Djk,
Quote

Generally for amounts in thousands it's far safer to avoid comma usage completely and use spaces.

Ahh, now we are three (you, me, Hutch) who agree on this [Linked Image]

Quote

There's also a weird convention in Ireland that "Euro" and "Cent" have no plural (i.e. "2 euro and 15cent, not 2 euros and 15 cents). Does that apply elsewhere too?

This is indeed the official way throughout Europe. I think the EU has said that it doesn't care what people use, but suggest this official form.

Quote

Also the position of the Euro Symbol (?) ... We always put £ before the amount but many other countries put their symbol after the amount and are continuing to write Euro prices the same way e.g. 2,99 E(?)

The Euro symbol should be treated just like £ and $. However, if you are writing 'Euro' it should be after.

Pauluk,
Quote

In English, 5:30 would be "half past five," but I think the Germans phrase it as "half before six" or something like that.

Swedes use the latter form. 5.30 (or 17.30 [Linked Image] ) is "halv sex", as you are halfway to six. It gets a bit more complex with 5.25, "fem i halv sex", literally meaning "five in half six"

I had no idea that there was a UK keyboard. Why on earth did someone invent such a thing?

Swedish keyboards have the less commonly used keys like colon, question mark and backslash in other positions than the US keyboard. A PITA when you ran DOS and DOS-based software which often forced the use of the US keyboard. Murphys law dictated that you always pushed the wrong key.

I once wrote an e-mail in a Canadian internet-café, using the alt key + number to get the Swedish characters. It went just fine until I mistyped the number for the last character and the e-mail was deleted. [Linked Image]
Posted By: Belgian Re: Your national date format - 06/18/03 05:51 PM
Trumpy,
To use your Euro sign which is situated next to the 5 key, you have to press the right alt key and the 5 key simultaneosly. If it doesn't work, then you have to change your input language to "English (United States) - United States - International".

[This message has been edited by Belgian (edited 06-18-2003).]
Posted By: C-H Re: Your national date format - 06/18/03 06:18 PM
Or set the keyboard to Swedish and push the letter E and Alt Gr simultaneously. [Linked Image]
Posted By: djk Re: Your national date format - 06/18/03 11:31 PM
or if you're using a Mac press Option(Alt) + 2 (marked with a Euro symbol)
Posted By: Bjarney Re: Your national date format - 06/19/03 12:10 AM
Looks like in Winders it's Alt+0128



doesn't work, but bold and italics seem to.




[This message has been edited by Bjarney (edited 06-18-2003).]
Posted By: pauluk Re: Your national date format - 06/19/03 07:56 AM
I have a better idea to keep it simple -- Why don't we just adopt the U.S. dollar as our official currency? [Linked Image]

The American-version keyboard I have on this system has no £-sign, of course, so I have to use alt-156 to enter one. Foreign currency symbols have long been a problem on computer systems, as they're not part of the standard ASCII character set (why would they be?). Printers need the correct character set as well: I still sometimes receive letters from govt. departments in which the £-sign prints as some accented European character instead.
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