pronunciation - How to write out dates correctly


I have a document dated 05/05/2012.


What should I say?




  • Based on the document from 05 May.

  • Based on the document from 5th May.

  • Based on the document from 05 of May.




Answer



Different organizations, publications, and contexts will call for different style guidelines.


Wikipedia, for example, has international readership, and does not use ordinal suffixes, articles, or leading zeros, but allows free interchange of the month and day order, e.g.



Based on the documents from 5 May…



or



Based on the documents from May 5…



with the [month day] format probably preferred in America. Other styles can be used, but should be chosen based on what is appropriate for the audience.


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