Jaarmaanddag

Jaar-maand-dag, written as jaarmaanddag in plain text, is a date notation that encodes the year first, followed by the month and then the day. The term combines the Dutch words jaar (year), maand (month) and dag (day). In practice, jaarmaanddag refers to the year-month-day sequence used in many technical contexts, especially in data interchange and software development.

Compared with other orders such as dag-maand-ja ar (DMY) and maand-dag-ja ar (MDY), jaarmaanddag emphasizes chronological order from most significant to least. The ISO 8601 representation YYYY-MM-DD is the most common explicit form of jaarmaanddag in international contexts; separators such as hyphens or no separators are used (for example, 2024-06-15 or 20240615).

Usage and advantages: jaarmaanddag is widely adopted in computing, databases, and data serialization because it allows straightforward lexicographic sorting and language-agnostic interpretation. It also aligns with many programming languages’ date types and with the ISO standard for unambiguous chronological representation.

Limitations: when presented to users in natural language, jaarmaanddag can be less familiar than locale-specific formats. Some cultures prefer day-first or month-first orders for readability. Therefore, systems often store dates in jaarmaanddag form but render them to users in a localized format, while ensuring consistent parsing and storage.

See also: ISO 8601, date format, datetime, chronology.