In Finland, the usual way of writing dates in normal text is with the months spelled out. The format varies according to the language used. In Finnish, a full stop (full point, dot or period) is placed after the day to indicate an ordinal: ; furthermore, the month is in the partitive case, always marked by . The month can also be written first, now in

genitive case In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...

(the day and the abbreviated word , 'day', are in essive case as above): . In

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

, the full stop is not used and the month is in nominative (without inflection): . The date can be preceded by the weekday (also lower case), in Finnish in essive case: , . The

Finnish language Finnish ( endonym: or ) is a Uralic language of the Finnic branch, spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. Finnish is one of the two official languages of Finland (the other being Swedish ...

has month names differing from most other languages; three letter abbreviations are not used in Finnish, and the months are not capitalised in either language (they are not considered proper names). In spoken Finnish in a context where it is clear people may say the short form of the month e.g. for 'October', but never in formal writing as several months also can be times of the year e.g. 'December' whereas is yule or Christmastide; 'June' is similar to 'summer'. In the Sami languages (

Inari Sámi Inari Sámi (, "the Inarian language", or , "the Inari (Aanaar) Sámi language") is a Sámi language spoken by the Inari Sámi of Finland. It has approximately 300 speakers, the majority of whom are middle-aged or older and live in the munici ...

Northern Sámi Northern or North Sámi ( ; se, davvisámegiella ; fi, pohjoissaame ; no, nordsamisk; sv, nordsamiska; disapproved exonym Lappish or Lapp) is the most widely spoken of all Sámi languages. The area where Northern Sámi is spoken covers the ...

and

Skolt Sámi Skolt Sámi ( , "the Sámi language", or , "the Eastern Sámi language", if a distinction needs to be made between it and the other Sámi languages) is a Uralic, Sámi language that is spoken by the Skolts, with approximately 300 speakers in ...

) the date can be given with the month first, but then spelt out in essive case: , , . The all-numeric form for dates is in the order day–month–year, using a full stop as the separator – for example: ''31.5.2002'' or ''31.5.02''. Years can be written with two or four digits, after the turn of the millennium usually with four, and numbers may be written with or without leading zero. The numeric form is often used in lists, letterheads, etc. A form with a

stroke A stroke is a medical condition in which poor blood flow to the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and hemorrhagic, due to bleeding. Both cause parts of the brain to stop functionin ...

is also common in Swedish, especially in handwritten text: ''31/5 2002'' or ''31/5 -02''. The weekday may be prepended: . The ISO 8601 notation (''2002-05-31'') is not used in normal text in Finland, but it is understood and used in some other contexts (mostly machine-generated). Numbering of weeks is used in Finland, and is simply expressed as in ; ('(week) 28') in both writing (abbreviated in Finnish and in Swedish) and speech, as well as on labels and in computer notation. The week begins with a Monday and week 1 is the week containing the year's first Thursday.

Time in Finland Finland uses Eastern European Time; sv, Östeuropeisk tid. (EET) during the winter as standard time and Eastern European Summer Time; sv, Östeuropeisk sommartid. (EEST) during the summer as daylight saving time. EET is two hours ahead of ...

often uses the

12-hour clock The 12-hour clock is a time convention in which the 24 hours of the day are divided into two periods: a.m. (from Latin , translating to "before midday") and p.m. (from Latin , translating to "after midday"). For different opinions on represent ...

in the spoken language and idiomatic expressions.

24-hour notation The modern 24-hour clock, popularly referred to in the United States as military time, is the convention of timekeeping in which the day runs from midnight to midnight and is divided into 24 hours. This is indicated by the hours (and minutes) pas ...

is used in writing, with a full point as the standardised and recommended separator (e.g. ''15.07'' or ''8.27''). However, a colon is almost exclusively used instead of a full point in computing environments, especially in Sámi languages. The conventions are the same for Finnish and Swedish.

References

{{Europe topic, Date and time notation in Time in Finland Finland