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I'm learning to communicate in English for a while, but I still have just a basic idea of how its vocabulary and grammar work.

When writing I've ended up facing a doubt in the following sentence:

(...) for persons that born before Oct 14th '95

Is that right to write a date like that (referring to 10/14/1995) or there are better or more usual ways to refer dates?

Thanks.

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    Remove "that" from the sentence. Either "persons born before" or "persons who were born before"; the formeris easier and more common. Commented Mar 28, 2018 at 3:10

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I would spell out the month. In the US the preferred style is October 14, 1995. We say "fourteenth" but omit the "th" in writing the number in dates. However, if I write the day of the month by itself, then I will use the "th": "I'm leaving for Ohio on the 14th."

I'm not sure about Canada, but other English-speaking countries follow different conventions, generally with the day of the month preceding the month.

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In Britain we can write a date using an ordinal day number, e.g. 1st October 2018, and in fact Microsoft Word helpfully superscripts the ordinal indicators (st, nd, rd, th).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_and_time_notation_in_the_United_Kingdom

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Side note: I am American, and European date formatting has always confused me. Keep this in mind.

As the other answers have clarified, it depends on where the person you're writing to is from (America vs. Europe & etc.) or where you're learning English. If the document isn't serious, you could write 10/14/95 like you first thought, but if the document is serious, then October 14, 1995 is the proper way.

Sorry I couldn't help more, but I hope you found your answer!

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  • Actually, I've got it, indeed. But the more, the merrier. Information is always welcome. Thanks for checking Commented May 2, 2018 at 17:02
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There are lots of different conventions for writing dates, depending on the country.This wiki article provides a useful summary. As long as it's not ambiguous then most people can work it out regardless of what format you use. 4/9/2015 is ambiguous, because both 4 and 9 can be a month, but 13/9/2015 is unambiguous because 13 cannot be a month.

Generally, it is preferable not to use digits in text: "that's the second time you broke the photocopier!" rather than "...the 2nd time...". With dates, there are too many numbers to write nineteen hundred and ninety five, so we use digits for the day and year, but generally we write month names in full, rather than abbreviated or in digits.

Note that, for some dates that have a special significance, we generally write the day in full: "the fourth of July" (independence day in America), "the first of April" (April fool's day), "the fifth of November" (bonfire night in the UK).

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    Even though '9/11' generally means 'the 9th of November' in the UK, we follow the American way of referring to that date in 2001. Commented May 3, 2018 at 18:01

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