You may optionally add the day of the week before the month: day-of-week, month day, year.
Spell out the names of months and days of the week in full; don't abbreviate them. Give the full four-digit year, not a two-digit abbreviation.
Example
Recommended: January 19, 2017
Don't express months as numbers, because different parts of the world use different numerical formats. For example:
- In the UK, the day comes first, followed by the month and year.
- In the USA, the month comes first, followed by the day and year.
- In some other parts of the world, the year comes first, followed by the month and day.
For this reason, expressing dates in numbers only (using slashes, periods, or hyphens as separators) can be confusing.
Examples
Not recommended: 02.12.2017
Not recommended: 12/02/2017
Recommended: February 12, 2017
Recommended: Sunday, February 12, 2017
If you must express a date in a purely numerical format, and you have a choice of dates, then whenever possible use a number greater than 12 for the day. This plainly differentiates the day from the month, no matter the order.
Examples
Not recommended: 04/06/2017
Recommended: 04/15/2017
When you're giving only the month and year, don't use a comma.
Example
Recommended: She was hired in January 2017.
When a month day, year date appears in the middle of a sentence, add a comma after the year.
However, if the date in the middle of the sentence consists of the month and year only, don't use a comma.
Examples
Recommended: The January 19, 2017, issue of ...
Recommended: The January 2017 issue of ...