Date and time notation in Australia
| Full date | 13 May 2025 |
|---|---|
| All-numeric date | 13/05/2025 |
| Time | 11:49 pm |
The date and time in Australia are most commonly recorded using the day–month–year format (13 May 2025) and the 12-hour clock (11:49 pm), although 24-hour time is used in some cases. For example, some public transport operators such as V/Line[1] and Transport for NSW[2] use 24-hour time, although others use 12-hour time instead.
Date
Australians typically write the date with the day leading, as in the United Kingdom and in New Zealand:
- 13 May 2025
- 13/05/2025
The month–day–year order (May 13, 2025) is sometimes used, often in the mastheads of magazines, schools, newspapers,[3][4] advertisements, video games, news, and TV shows. Month–day–year in numeric-only form (05/13/2025) is rarely used.
The ISO 8601 date format (2025-05-13) is recommended by the government to be used when communicating internationally.[5] It is also commonly used in software.
The Australian government identifies Monday as the first day of the week,[6] which is consistent with the Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR) since its October 2021 release.[7] However, there is disagreement among the general population over whether Monday or Sunday is the first day of the week.[8]
Weeks are most identified by the last day of the week, either the Friday in business (e.g., "week ending 19/1") or the Sunday in other use (e.g., "week ending 21/1"). Week ending is often abbreviated to "W/E" or "W.E." The first day of the week or the day of an event are sometimes referred to (e.g., "week of 15/1"). Week numbers (as in "the third week of 2007") are not often used, but may appear in some business diaries in numeral-only form (e.g., "3" at the top or bottom of the page). ISO 8601 week notation (e.g. 2025-W20) is not widely understood.[citation needed]
Time
The Australian government recommends using the 12-hour clock (11:49 pm), except where the 24-hour clock is more helpful in the context, such as in travel, scientific fields and the military.[5] The government also recommends a colon as the separator; however, the full stop is still used in some contexts.[5] They also suggest writing the noon/after noon qualifier as "am" or "pm" in lower case without a full stop.[5]
References
- ^ "Why do you use 24-hour time?". V/Line - Regional public transport for Victoria. Retrieved 24 April 2024.
- ^ "New South Wales Train Link Timetable for the North Western Region". transportnsw.info. 1 July 2023. Retrieved 5 April 2024.
- ^ "Latest News". News Corp Australia. Archived from the original on 4 November 2017. Retrieved 4 November 2017.
- ^ "The West Australian Demo". The West Australian. 16 August 2016. Archived from the original on 1 September 2017. Retrieved 4 November 2017.
- ^ a b c d "Dates and time". Australian Government Style Manual. 17 October 2023.
- ^ "Dates and time". Australian Government Style Manual. 28 March 2024. Retrieved 27 April 2024.
- ^ "Unicode CLDR - CLDR 40 Release Note". cldr.unicode.org. 27 October 2021. Retrieved 24 April 2024.
- ^ Lyons, Gabrielle (17 August 2019). "Sunday Vs Monday: Which day do you consider the start of the week?". ABC News. Retrieved 24 April 2024.
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