Material Dates

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How to ask the date

If you want to ask what the date is, you can say:

What’s the date today?  or What’s today’s date?

What’s the date tomorrow?  or What’s tomorrow’s date?

You can answer by saying:

It’s 27th September. / Today is 27th September.

Tomorrow is September 28th.

How to say the date


When we say dates in English we use ordinal numbers.

Ordinal number is a number that can be used to tell the order.

Cardinal number is a number that can be used to tell the total of


something.

So for 1 January, we don’t say the cardinal number ‘one’ but we say
‘first’. And we say ‘the’ before the number followed by ‘of’. For
example,

1st January- It’s the first of January.

It’s also possible to invert the month and day. For example,

It’s January first. 

In this case you don’t need to say ‘the’ and ‘of’.


When we say the date in English we normally use ordinal numbers (first,
second, third, etc) instead of cardinal numbers (one, two, three, etc).
Let’s look at these ordinal numbers:

8 = eight

8th =eighth eighth

How to write the date


When we write a date we don’t need to add ‘the’ and ‘of’ as we do when
we speak. For example:

It’s the first of January  – speaking

It’s 1st January –  writing

Dear diary,

It’s 11th November. I with my friends learn how to say and write the date.
Be careful when writing the dates using only numbers.

For example, Christmas day is written:

12 / 25 / 17 in United States (the month is first) and


25 / 12 / 17 in the rest of the world (the day is first).

So what day is this? 3/4/17


It depends on the country. It can be:
March fourth, twenty seventeen (in United States) OR
The third of April, twenty seventeen (in the rest of the world)

To avoid confusion, when writing an email or any other written form of


English, it is best to write the month as its name (January, February, etc.)
or its abbreviation (Jan. Feb. etc.) and NOT as its number .

And remember, the months are always written in Capital letters.

In US English, a comma is put after the day if it is followed by a year.

March 17, 2016.


December 22, 2012.
1.November 5, 2021
2.December 20, 1878
3.January 18, 1991
4.April 16, 2004
5.October 23, 1900
6.November 26, 1860
7.September 2, 2009
8.August 14, 2009
9.August 17, 1945
10. September 13, 1986

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