Dates

 Dates usage

1. The month of the year

1. January
2. February
3. March
4. April
5. May
6. June
7. July
8. August
9. September
10. October
11. November
12. December

Note: Always write the names of months and days with a capital letter: January, Friday, but not aplil, friday, etc., (see section 2 below). With four seasons we must write without a capital letter: spring, summer, autumn, and winter (Great Britain: fall).

2. The days of the week

Image by Kidaha from Pixabay

1. Monday
2. Tuesday
3. Wednesday
4. Thursday
5. Friday
6. Saturday
7. Sunday

3. In "speech"

These are examples of how to talk about dates:

1. 'What's the date today?' 'It's the third of January.' 
2. 'What's your birthday?' 'It's on the fifteenth of October, 1995*.'
3. 'When was the computer invented?' 'In 1822*.'

* For more details on how to pronounce these numbers, see section 3.2 below.

3.1 Optional patterns

Option A:

(name of day)	the	number of day	of	name of month	(number of year)
(Friday)	the	third	of	October	(1997)

Option B:

(name of day)	name of month	the	number of day	(number of year)
(Friday)	October	the	third	(1997)

Note: the phrases inside brackets are optional and can be omitted, for example, Friday, the third of October, 1997.

3.2 How to pronounce the numbers (day and year) in "speech"

1. For the day, we must use ordinal numbers for the number of the day (for example, the first, the second, ... the fifteenth, etc.,).
2.  For the year, we must read the date like this up to 1999:
• 1045 => ten forty-five
• 1310 => thirteen ten
• 1960 => nineteen sixty
• 1800* => eighteen hundred
• 1905** => nineteen hundred and five
• 1782 => seventeen eighty-two
3. For the year starts from 2000, we must read the date as follows:
• 2000 => two thousand
• 2005 => two thousand and five
• 2012 => two thousand and twelve or twenty twelve
• 2022 => two thousand and twenty-two or twenty twenty-two

Video Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPIjo0jJ7dg

Note: 

* For dates ending in -00, apart from 2000, we use the word hundred. We  can also use hundred with and in other dates. For example: 1960 => nineteen hundred and sixty. [this is used in formal writing]

** If the dates end in single figures such as 1601, 1602, 1603, ..., 1609 (meaning the last figures from 1 to 9 after 0 [zero]), we usually add hundred and/or the letter O (instead of zero). For example: 1905 => nineteen hundred and five or nineteen-O-five.

4. In formal "writing" we can use two patterns

1. Friday, 1st October 1997 or 1 June, 1997 (This's used in Great Britain).
2. Wednesday, July 10th, 1989 or July 10, 1989 (This's used in the United States).

According to the examples above, we can notice that the letter -st, -nd, -rd, and/or -th can be omitted after the ordinal number. 

Conclusion:

According to these explanations, we hope you understand and know how to use dates in speech and writing the right way.