Date and time notation in Australia most commonly records the date using the day-month-year format (31 October 2023), while the ISO 8601 format (2023-10-31) is increasingly used for all-numeric dates. The time can be written using either the 12-hour clock (12:50 pm) or the 24-hour clock (12:50).
Australians typically write the date with the day leading, as in the United Kingdom and New Zealand:
The month-day-year order (October 31, 2023) is sometimes used, often in the mastheads of magazines, schools, newspapers, advertisements, video games, news, and TV shows. MDY in numeric-only form (10/31/2023) is rarely used.
The ISO 8601 date format (2023-10-31) 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 (31/10/23).
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 (e.g. 2023-W44) is not widely understood. Some more traditional calendars instead treat Sunday as the first day of the week.
The Australian government allows writing the time using either the 24-hour clock (12:50), which is commonplace in technical fields such as military, aviation, computing, navigation, transportation and the sciences; or the 12-hour clock (12:50 pm). The before noon/after noon qualifier is usually written as "am" or "pm". A colon is the preferred time separator.
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