Date and time notation in Australia most commonly records the date using the day-month-year format (), while the

ISO 8601 ISO 8601 is an international standard covering the worldwide exchange and communication of date and time-related data. It is maintained by the Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and was first published in 1988, wi ...

format () is increasingly used for all-numeric dates. The time can be written using either 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 ...

() or the

24-hour clock 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 ...

().

Date

Australians typically write the date with the day leading, as in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

and

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

: * * ''or'' The month–day–year order () is sometimes used, usually informally in the mastheads of magazines, schools, newspapers, advertisements, video games, news, and TV shows. MDY in numeric-only form () is rarely used. The

date format () is the recommended short date format for government publications. The first two digits of the year are often omitted in everyday use and on forms (). Weeks are most identified by the last day of the week, either the Friday in business (e.g., "week ending 19/1") or the Sunday in other use (e.g., "week ending 21/1"). Week ending is often abbreviated to "W/E" or "W.E." The first day of the week or the day of an event are sometimes referred to (e.g., "week of 15/1"). Week numbers (as in "the third week of 2007") are not often used, but may appear in some business diaries in numeral-only form (e.g., "3" at the top or bottom of the page).

ISO 8601 week notation The ISO week date system is effectively a leap week calendar system that is part of the ISO 8601 date and time standard issued by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) since 1988 (last revised in 2019) and, before that, it was ...

(e.g. ) is not widely understood. Some more traditional calendars instead treat Sunday as the first day of the week.

Time

The Australian government allows writing the time using either the 24-hour clock (), which is commonplace in technical fields such as military, aviation, computing, navigation, transportation and the sciences; or the 12-hour clock (). The before noon/after noon qualifier is usually written as "am" or "pm". A colon is the preferred time separator.

References

Time in Australia

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

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