# Abbreviated Month Date

Key: `datetime.date.abbreviated_month`

Date with an abbreviated month name, month-first (Feb 4, 2023) or day-first (4 Feb 2023, 4 Feb 23). Locale-specific because month abbreviations vary by language (Jan vs janv. vs ene). The month token is any run of three or more Latin letters with an optional full stop, which takes the abbreviations of Unicode CLDR in en (Feb), en-GB (Sept), fr (janv.) and the other locales, and the dotted AP-style form (Feb. 4, 2023).

Page: <https://meridian.online/docs/projects/finetype/types/datetime/date/abbreviated_month>

Format: `%b %d, %Y`

Samples: `Jan 15, 2024`, `15 Jan 2024`, `Dec 31, 2019`

## Written by

Each locale below writes this format with its CLDR date pattern at the styles named beside it.

`en` medium · `en` (AS, BI, CA, GU, MH, MP, PH, PR, UM, VI) medium

## Background

### Origin

In POSIX strftime, the %b conversion specifier is replaced by the locale's abbreviated month name.[[1]](https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/functions/strftime.html) POSIX defines %h as equivalent to %b.[[1]](https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/functions/strftime.html)

RFC 5322, the Internet Message Format, defines the date in a message header as a day, then a month, then a year.[[2]](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5322) RFC 5322 restricts the month to twelve three-letter English names, from Jan to Dec.[[2]](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5322)

Unicode's LDML date pattern syntax writes the abbreviated month as MMM, with Sep as its example.[[3]](https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr35/tr35-dates.html) In the CLDR data for the en locale, the medium date format is MMM d, y.[[4]](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/unicode-org/cldr-json/main/cldr-json/cldr-dates-full/main/en/ca-gregorian.json) CLDR's en-GB locale uses d MMM y as its medium date format instead.[[5]](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/unicode-org/cldr-json/main/cldr-json/cldr-dates-full/main/en-GB/ca-gregorian.json)

### Use

Wikipedia's article on United States date notation says that in traditional American usage, dates are written in month–day–year order.[[6]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_and_time_notation_in_the_United_States)

## Sources

1. [strftime](https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/functions/strftime.html) — standard
2. [RFC 5322: Internet Message Format](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5322) — standard
3. [Unicode Locale Data Markup Language (LDML) Part 4: Dates](https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr35/tr35-dates.html) — standard
4. [ca-gregorian.json](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/unicode-org/cldr-json/main/cldr-json/cldr-dates-full/main/en/ca-gregorian.json) — dataset
5. [ca-gregorian.json](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/unicode-org/cldr-json/main/cldr-json/cldr-dates-full/main/en-GB/ca-gregorian.json) — dataset
6. [Date and time notation in the United States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_and_time_notation_in_the_United_States) — secondary source