Learn English – How to write a date range (e.g., 6 May to 8 June) in a way that is concise and unambiguous

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In general, I try to write dates as one of:

  • 2014-01-03
  • 3 Jan 2013
  • 3 January 2013

avoiding slashes altogether so as to avoid any ambiguity with American date formats. That said, I've never found a good solution for situations where you need a short format (without the year), especially when dealing with ranges.

What's a good way of handling something like:

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 | Date        | Name |
 | ----------- | ---- |
 | 1/3  – 1/9  | John |
 | 1/10 – 1/16 | Jill |
 | 1/17 – 1/23 | Mark |

in a way that works on both sides of the pond?

Best Answer

Preferring your middle, unambiguous example of 3 Jan 2013, it would be quite natural to drop the year.

 | Date          | Name |
 | -----------   | ---- |
 | 03Jan – 09Jan | John |
 | 10Jan – 16Jan | Jill |
 | 17Jan – 23Jan | Mark |

It's quite easy to add in a 2-digit year when the date range spans over the year end.

 | 28Dec13 – 01Jan14 | NewGuy |

These formats will be understood on both sides of the pond.

At the cost of slightly more mental processing, you may also use two-letter month abbreviations, such as http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mois. (I would suggest the Code bilingue column, but there does not seem to be a two-letter consensus in English, possibly because of the confusion between March and May.)

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