US Stamp Album Pages

Hi all. I am currently producing United States stamp album pages in PDF format for users to print off themselves. I am from the U.K. but am using American spelling for things like color (colour in the U.K.). I have a question about dates. In the U.K. we us the Day/Month/Year convention, but the U.S. uses Month/Day/Year. Which do you think I should use for my pages and does it really matter that much?

Hi ChunkyChunder,
I grew up with D/M/Y. Moving to Canada as an adult I was surprised to find that the completely illogical numeric date format of M/D/Y was in common usage. As a result I have standardized on Y/M/D as the only numeric format that will be understood around the world.
On the other hand, when the month is given in word format, month first is more concise e.g "September 18, 2018' vs "18th September 2018".

You don't mention what means you are using to create your US album, but there seems to be no shortage of existing US album pages in PDF format. There are the excellent pages created by Don (51studebaker)http://www.stampsmarter.com/Learnin...gesHome.html alternatively I have a US album here http://www.thestampweb.com/albums.html
Clive

For an English man or woman to use American spellings represents a backward step down the evolutionary scale, and can lead to the growth of a tail and a propensity for tree-dwelling.

Most of the world uses D/M/Y - why change?

I am using Microsoft Publisher to create the pages. I create free pages with no illustrations (just colour and face value), or colour illustrated pages which I sell on my own web page and ebay. I have produced GB, Jersey, Guernsey & Alderney, Gibraltar, Ireland, Falkland Islands and Isle of Man. I'm about half way through U.S. and have been using 18th September 2018 type format when it struck me that this might be a mistake.

I spent some time in Europe and adopted some of their habits. I at with m knife in my right hand is, to coy, and my fork in my left, to shovel it in. I also date checks, which I sometimes write "cheques, as day. month. year. At least one guy thinks I am ex-CIA. Really, I am KGB.

Don

I would probably stick to September 18, 2018 as it is in common usage throughout much of the English speaking world. Spelling is another matter altogether - there is no need to perpetuate Webster's folly .

If you are only just getting started with your US pages you might find it more productive to download and modify the AlbumEasy source files from the link I gave previously and then use AlbumEasy (it is free) to generate the pages rather than starting from scratch.
You will be able to give the pages away free, but if you want to sell them you will need permission from the person who created the pages, this should not be a problem however, if you contact me from the contact page on my web site I can put you in touch with him.

Clive

Thanks for the advice but, having created GB from scratch I have most of the objects needed in template format. GB took a long time to complete from scratch but it was a great learning curve. I like to be precise with the size of the stamps so that the image on the illustrated pages is not larger than the actual stamp so I count the perforations to get the size correct. However, lots of stamps have a common size so it is not necessary to measure them all this way. I prefer to do all the work myself as I'm a bit OCD that way. Obviously I use catalogues for much of the data and the chronology and the internet is a fantastic resource. I also add data to the foot of each stamp stating what bridge or mountain or animal or whatever is actually pictured on the stamp.

Here in Canada you can regularly see all three date formats used. DMY or YMD on government stuff, usually MDY in private/business use. But it varies from person to person - it can get quite confusing when a date like 11/11/12 is encountered...

I have read the rules on posting pics here and they have to be quite small so here is a link to a preview of some of my G.B. pages: *** Edited by Staff - Please Review the rules that you agreed to when you registered. ***

I think you can safely stick with Day/Month/Year, we Americans can figure it out.
P.S.- I eat with inverted fork in left hand, my Swedish roots.