This morning, a clueless autoresponder sent a dozen or so of these to a mailing list I’m on:

G’dday,

I’ll be out of office starting 09-08 till 13-08 included.

As I glanced at it, I thought “September to.. wait… d’oh!”

It’s a good example of why using numbers for the month just isn’t a good idea when you’re dealing with anything international or cross-cultural. Just last week I read an article on WebWord about formatting dates on the web. I’m not a fan of the particular format the author chose (6-Aug-2004), but it did prompt me to check my site for any 8/6/04-style dates that might still be floating around. It’s on my to-do list.

Update Aug. 20: The author of that article has posted a followup.