UNSW Writing Style Guide UNSW Writing Style Guide | Page 45

Dates
Write full dates in body copy : Monday , 20 March 2018
Monday , 20 March , 2018
Monday , March 20 , 2018
Do not include ‘ st ’, ‘ nd ’, ‘ rd ’ or ‘ th ’ after a date .
It is only necessary to include the day of the week if you think that information will be useful to the reader . In many cases you can just write the date , month and year :
20 March 2018
If space is at a premium ( for example , within a table ) or there is a character limit ( on Twitter , for instance ), you can abbreviate the month :
20 Mar 2011
Present time spans like this : 2007 – 2008
2007 / 2008
2007 / 08
Do not use apostrophes when referring to decades : As Peter was born in the 1990s , he is now in his 20s .
As Peter was born in the 1990 ’ s , he is now in his 20 ’ s .
Days and months
In tables , or other places where space is restricted , you can abbreviate the days of the week and
months of the year without a full stop :
M
Tu
W
Th
F
Sa
Su
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sept
Oct
Nov
Dec
Time
Use a full stop rather than a colon to separate hours from minutes , and do not add a space between the time and ‘ am ’ or ‘ pm ’:
8.30pm
8:30pm
8:30 pm
It is not necessary to use two zeros to indicate full hours . 6am
6.00am
Use the terms ‘ noon ’ and ‘ midnight ’ to avoid potential confusion caused by ‘ 12am ’ or ‘ 12pm ’.
Avoid using unnecessary words when talking about the time in a sentence : 9pm
9pm at night
noon
12 noon
In body text , spell out days of the week and months of the year , always starting with an uppercase letter :
The course begins on Monday .
The course begins in October .
Writing Style Guide | Time and date 45 | Back to contents