Please Don’t Abbreviate the Year ‘2020’ on Checks and Legal Documents(frequentbusinesstraveler.com)
frequentbusinesstraveler.com
Please Don’t Abbreviate the Year ‘2020’ on Checks and Legal Documents
http://www.frequentbusinesstraveler.com/2020/01/please-dont-abbreviate-the-year-2020-on-checks-and-legal-documents/
70 comments
Just switch to ISO 8601 formatted dates already: YYYY-MM-DD.
I agree. I love when my dates sort fine as normal strings. It's easier to read too imo.
I regret that I have but one upvote to give.
I've had my rant at someone already this year. A lawyer posting about legal documents saying "make sure you put all four digits in to avoid confusion" and the giving an example like 03/01/2020.
Sigh.
Sigh.
To be real, that might be a date format I would fire a lawyer over.
In the debate between US and non-US dates, I think this is the right answer.
I've started using it as much as possible now. But I am but one man.
I've started using it as much as possible now. But I am but one man.
Please just never abbreviate the year. 100 years passes quickly these days.
This meme is analyzed in detail by a lawyer and his friend in the middle of this podcast:
https://openargs.com/oa347-pennhurst-and-the-voter-purge-in-...
https://openargs.com/oa347-pennhurst-and-the-voter-purge-in-...
Could you give us a summary, or a reason to bother listening to it?
Basically you shouldn’t worry about this legally or practically. The law is robust enough to prevent this from being an issue
Relevant discussion starts at 14:00 (15:47 to skip the intro).
(1) stop using checks already
and
(2) legal documents should always have the full date (spelled out) on them anyway, so if you just use '20' then that would have been wrong anyway, but 11/Dec/20.
and
(2) legal documents should always have the full date (spelled out) on them anyway, so if you just use '20' then that would have been wrong anyway, but 11/Dec/20.
(1) stop using checks already
I always find it interesting how people of a certain age, and especially in technology bubbles, enjoy restricting their options so much, as if there is some kind of nobility in giving themselves fewer choices and less freedom in life.
Best tool for the job is on Windows? No way, I only use bespoke FrotzOS distributions on a laptop I built myself from parts I reflowed in my co-living oven.
One of the best movies of all time is on TV tonight? No way, I only watch video if it comes in an internet stream, and only from services I have to tunnel through three VPNs to reach.
Write a check? No way, I only use the Spltzit app for finances, even though it's not accepted everywhere.
Checks are a thing, and will remain a thing for many more decades, or even longer. Get used to it.
I always find it interesting how people of a certain age, and especially in technology bubbles, enjoy restricting their options so much, as if there is some kind of nobility in giving themselves fewer choices and less freedom in life.
Best tool for the job is on Windows? No way, I only use bespoke FrotzOS distributions on a laptop I built myself from parts I reflowed in my co-living oven.
One of the best movies of all time is on TV tonight? No way, I only watch video if it comes in an internet stream, and only from services I have to tunnel through three VPNs to reach.
Write a check? No way, I only use the Spltzit app for finances, even though it's not accepted everywhere.
Checks are a thing, and will remain a thing for many more decades, or even longer. Get used to it.
Checks are only a thing in the US because there is no proper banking infrastructure. Here in the EU we can transfer money person-to-person, person-to-business and business-to-business instantly between a very large variety of banking institutions spanning 10's of countries. No need for routing instructions, correspondent banks, transfer accounts or any of that bs, and it's cheap to boot.
There is absolutely no reason why the United States could not do the same, in fact it would be easier there. Payment systems in the United States are archaic and error prone. They also tend to offload the risk of fraud onto the consumers/merchants and I suspect that plus the fees are the bigger reasons why the banks are reluctant to get their act together.
There is absolutely no reason why the United States could not do the same, in fact it would be easier there. Payment systems in the United States are archaic and error prone. They also tend to offload the risk of fraud onto the consumers/merchants and I suspect that plus the fees are the bigger reasons why the banks are reluctant to get their act together.
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Checks are only a thing in the US because there is no proper banking infrastructure.
Tell that to the French hotel my wife stayed in 15 months ago that only took cash or American Express travelers checks.
Tell that to the French hotel my wife stayed in 15 months ago that only took cash or American Express travelers checks.
> Tell that to the French hotel my wife stayed in 15 months ago that only took cash or American Express travelers checks.
And chip-and-pin and likely also credit cards but they tend to not advertise that fact because they hate the fees and the slow settlement. That's why in France every cab driver ever has a sign on their back seats stating that 'unfortunately, their credit card processing machine just broke down' (by law they have to accept them but if the machine broke down on that day they get dispensation for that day so this loophole is immediately abused, if this happens to you simply stick to your guns and sooner or later it will turn out that the machine works just fine).
I spend a ton of time in hotels in France (and elsewhere in Europe) and have yet to see one that did not have a wide selection of payment options.
This page:
https://about-france.com/banks-payment.htm
has this passage on it:
" France is a country in which the use of cheques is also widespread. However French traders, shops, hotels etc. will not usually accept payment by cheque unless the cheque is on a French bank; some places accept cheques in Euros on banks in other Eurozone counries, but most do not, given the increased risk and the possibility of bank charges. It is generally impossible to pay for anything using a cheque on a bank situated outside the Eurozone."
Even that seems a bit archaic to me because I haven't seen checks (or rather: cheques) in France in a decade or more but American Express travelers checks may be the exception, but this post from 2014 basically says not to bother:
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/france/don-t-b...
"
Brought Amex travellers cheques in Euros on our trip to France only to discover NO ONE, not even banks take or cash them. Have tried paying with them in hotels, restaurants, and stores-no takers. Exchange bureaus (even Ria which is recommended on American Express website in Lyon) would not cash them. Spent a good couple hours wandering and visiting the following to no avail: La Poste (used to cash, but not any more), BNP Paribas, LCL, Societe Generale, Credit Agricole, Bank Populaire, CE.
Take note: don't bother with travellers cheques-will never use again. BRING a debit card, credit card with chip/pin technology, and some cash."
Which pretty much mirrors my own experience.
And chip-and-pin and likely also credit cards but they tend to not advertise that fact because they hate the fees and the slow settlement. That's why in France every cab driver ever has a sign on their back seats stating that 'unfortunately, their credit card processing machine just broke down' (by law they have to accept them but if the machine broke down on that day they get dispensation for that day so this loophole is immediately abused, if this happens to you simply stick to your guns and sooner or later it will turn out that the machine works just fine).
I spend a ton of time in hotels in France (and elsewhere in Europe) and have yet to see one that did not have a wide selection of payment options.
This page:
https://about-france.com/banks-payment.htm
has this passage on it:
" France is a country in which the use of cheques is also widespread. However French traders, shops, hotels etc. will not usually accept payment by cheque unless the cheque is on a French bank; some places accept cheques in Euros on banks in other Eurozone counries, but most do not, given the increased risk and the possibility of bank charges. It is generally impossible to pay for anything using a cheque on a bank situated outside the Eurozone."
Even that seems a bit archaic to me because I haven't seen checks (or rather: cheques) in France in a decade or more but American Express travelers checks may be the exception, but this post from 2014 basically says not to bother:
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/france/don-t-b...
"
Brought Amex travellers cheques in Euros on our trip to France only to discover NO ONE, not even banks take or cash them. Have tried paying with them in hotels, restaurants, and stores-no takers. Exchange bureaus (even Ria which is recommended on American Express website in Lyon) would not cash them. Spent a good couple hours wandering and visiting the following to no avail: La Poste (used to cash, but not any more), BNP Paribas, LCL, Societe Generale, Credit Agricole, Bank Populaire, CE.
Take note: don't bother with travellers cheques-will never use again. BRING a debit card, credit card with chip/pin technology, and some cash."
Which pretty much mirrors my own experience.
I guess you're not including UK here? Checks are a thing in UK and is very common for .gov institutions: driving licence? Write a check. Overpaid taxes? Receive check. Pay national insurance gaps? Write a check. It's good though that pretty much every banking app has ability to scan and deposit a check to your account in a matter of seconds.
I can't comment on the rest but I recently paid for my driving license electronically.
For taxes you can choose whether to get a check or have the money deposited directly into a bank account.
I don't necessarily disagree, but you're glossing over the trade offs in making those decisions. Windows is a poorly behaved proprietary operating system from an extremely poorly behaved company with a long history of doing questionable things. OTA TV has ads and I presume lower quality. Checks, as we are discussing, have what appears to be some long-standing security problems. By all means is the best tool for the job, but don't mistake "works (ignoring costs aid side effects)" for "best", and please don't assume that just because people are very picky about what they use means that they're not doing so for legitimate reasons.
Many countries have phased out checks. Others only have them as a legacy option. The change happened really fast.
I think the bank should have the option that the person with the bank account can require that cheques written from that account to be digitally signed. If this option is used, then the digital signature must be included in the cheque; you can calculate this on your computer, without requiring an internet connection or any proprietary software. If you do not have a computer, you can go to the bank and they will digitally sign it for you.
Isn't that the point, that you might think 11/Dec/20 is unambiguous, but it is easily converted to 11/Dec/2011
That is why the real date will be spelled out, typically like this: January the twentieth of the year two thousand and twenty or something to that effect. We're talking legal documents here, they don't take chances with those. The date shorthand is just that: a shorthand.
Any serious contract / deed / legal doc I have signed so far has followed that convention, the century being the optional one. The fact that there are always multiple signed copies of such documents, other supporting documents (communications, email) and that fraud in writing is punished quite severely seems to have kept me safe so far.
Any serious contract / deed / legal doc I have signed so far has followed that convention, the century being the optional one. The fact that there are always multiple signed copies of such documents, other supporting documents (communications, email) and that fraud in writing is punished quite severely seems to have kept me safe so far.
Occasionally some places leave you no option but to use a check, at least in the US.
Or charge you a fee for paying other ways, even when those other ways are cheaper for them to process than physical checks (e.g. ACH/Debit Cards). It is often just a way to leverage a higher price on consumers unwilling to write physical checks.
Physical checks are outrageously expensive to process in Europe, about $25 / check.
Seems like a joke, to think that people still use cheques somewhere... like what the fuck
I wish I could live a simple life like you.
Want to buy some land? Get ready to write a check to some person or government agency along the way.
Want to transfer money from your account in bank to another with zero fees? Write a check.
Want to start a business? Expect to write a check along the way.
Want to stay in a hotel in some of the world's most interesting places? Cash or travelers checks. Credit card, if you're lucky, but then with a big fee, and they might not have internet.
The real world isn't all online. It isn't all electronic. It isn't Star Trek.
Want to buy some land? Get ready to write a check to some person or government agency along the way.
Want to transfer money from your account in bank to another with zero fees? Write a check.
Want to start a business? Expect to write a check along the way.
Want to stay in a hotel in some of the world's most interesting places? Cash or travelers checks. Credit card, if you're lucky, but then with a big fee, and they might not have internet.
The real world isn't all online. It isn't all electronic. It isn't Star Trek.
Cheques are being phased out in New Zealand this year. Almost no one uses them here anymore. It's all electronic, online. Zero fees for bank transfers.
[deleted]
I must live in Star Trek because I can assure you I do all of that electronically and with no fees. If you give someone here a cheque chances are they won't even know what it is. I'd say literally nobody under 30 here has seen a cheque in their entire life. (Spain)
I think that if somebody is going to commit fraud against you by changing the date on a check or document, that this is not going to matter at all.
I already don't abbreviate the year if I can avoid it. I prefer YYYY-MM-DD format myself; long form (e.g. "January 4, 2020") can also be used. However, some forms specify use of a particular date format (but if they do, then it is clear what the format is from the form; still sometimes the year can be ambiguous if there is only two digits).
Yet more reason to use the objectively correct date format.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#Dates
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#Dates
How is it more "objectively correct" than DD-MM-YYYY?
Because its unambiguous -- DD-MM-YYYY could be confused for MM-DD-YYYY
I personally prefer to spell out the first three letters of the name of the month to reduce ambiguity, this works well across all regions in the world I do business with.
How can you confuse 31-12-2019 ?
Unless you plan to use one format until 12th of each Month and a different format between 13th and 31st, your objection doesn't seem relevant.
10-11-2019 and 11-10-2019
Obviously you can't, because you cherry picked a non-confusing date.
But you can easily confuse 01-02-2020 or 03-01-2020.
But you can easily confuse 01-02-2020 or 03-01-2020.
Little endian is obviously heretic, in left-to-right languages.
ASCII sorting order is chronological order.
I would note that the first letter of "ASCII" stands for "American".
For the same reasons the time format HH:MM:SS is objectively correct and and not HH:SS:MM, SS:MM:HH, MM:SS:HH, SS:HH:MM, or MM:HH:SS.
No, dates are for humans not computers sorting things. DD-MM-YYYY is "objectively better" because that's how most humans read dates. See where this is going?
How is it more "objectively correct" than DD-MM-YYYY?
Because the I in ISO means International, so it's automatically better on HN.
It's why the people on HN go to International House of Pancakes so much, but wouldn't be caught dead in The Pancake House.
Because the I in ISO means International, so it's automatically better on HN.
It's why the people on HN go to International House of Pancakes so much, but wouldn't be caught dead in The Pancake House.
That is the right format but 'normal people' assume context first so the 12th of January without further context indicates the present year and the 12th of January 2019 or just '19 is enough to disambiguate. The ISO date code was created with computers in mind (sort order) but real people are not computers and besides that there are quite a few other date systems in the world so it is biased to Gregorian anyway.
I think it's a small hurdle to overcome. Our visual parsing routine can be updated to read YYYY-MM-DD focusing on the rightmost digits, if those are what's important.
> so called 'normal people' ... context first ... indicates the present year
If I refer to 12th of January during Christmas, do I refer to the one that is just a few weeks away or the one that is in the present year?
If I refer to 12th of January during Christmas, do I refer to the one that is just a few weeks away or the one that is in the present year?
Again, that is a context thing. If you are talking about your sons upcoming birthday that would be the nearest one. I rarely see people referring to events by the exact date if it isn't some momentous occasion (9/11 ... but what year?), or to plan something.
If you typically refer to all days of the year past when the upcoming one is very close then you'd probably make that plain with some note on context. If not you might find yourself with an unscheduled party on your hands :)
If you typically refer to all days of the year past when the upcoming one is very close then you'd probably make that plain with some note on context. If not you might find yourself with an unscheduled party on your hands :)
Many of us in tech are prone to using mobile apps instead of cash - but we do sign legal documents and this is an area where it would pay to be particularly careful when writing the year.
I saw one of my aunts share this on Facebook and was unsure if it was actual advice or just the normal chain mail spam that gets passed around.
Thoughts?
Thoughts?
IMO, mostly chain mail.
1. Most contracts don't exist in isolation. They'll be associated with some sort of supporting event. Emails, text messages, etc.
2. Similarly, when a contract actually matters (under legal evaluation), it isn't evaluated in isolation. That includes establishing the validity of the contract. If the parties disagree on the date, that should raise red flags.
3. You should retain a copy of the contract no matter what.
4. Last, but not least. Anything of importance should (1) using the full date - perhaps even spelling out the month to avoid format differences (2) consider involving a 3rd party witness like a notary.
1. Most contracts don't exist in isolation. They'll be associated with some sort of supporting event. Emails, text messages, etc.
2. Similarly, when a contract actually matters (under legal evaluation), it isn't evaluated in isolation. That includes establishing the validity of the contract. If the parties disagree on the date, that should raise red flags.
3. You should retain a copy of the contract no matter what.
4. Last, but not least. Anything of importance should (1) using the full date - perhaps even spelling out the month to avoid format differences (2) consider involving a 3rd party witness like a notary.
This one does make sense. I haven't read it yet, but I always write the full year. For 2020, if you abbreviate it as just 20, adding two more digits allows anyone to fake a future date into 79 years (2021, 2022.. 2099) etc However in the past, this would have been avoided since abbreviating 2019 as 19 and adding two digits would move you into the past which wont make sense always.
Moving a date into the past or the future can both be just as disruptive, depending on the application.
If you’re really committed to abbreviating it, go with 3 characters instead—“020”. Bam! Problem solved. If someone tries to stick digits on the end they’ll get an octal number unexpectedly!
kbar13(1)
Mandatory link and strong recommendation: https://xkcd.com/1179/