Engraving Dates in Sweden

[Suzanne]

I bought my Sweetie something I want to have engraved for Christmas. I will arrive in Sweden and give it to him on Christmas Day. What would be the most appropriate date format?

12-25-03
25-12-03
031225 (he actually dated a card to me like this).

The inscription will be in English.

Thanks!!

[Sandy]

My wedding ring is engraved 24/9 1999.

[Vember]

the typical date format is yymmdd

but you do what you like ... it's up to you if you want to mix English wording with Swedish date format

[Debbie]

My engagement/wedding ring is the same as Sandy's....well not the same exactly but the date follows the same format.

[Sabeine]

I have heard that if one writes the year in full as in Sandy's wedding ring as an example then the year goes at the end. In the case of the card that you received, since it said 03 first and the 2003 was not written out in full, then it goes in the front.

It seems strange since we always have the year at the end no matter how we write it, but that's how it is here.

Today is Nov 4th, and one would think that it should look like this, 11/4, since that is what we are used to, but Swedes write it 4/11. It took me a long time to get used to this and not to think that it was April 4th. LOL

[Klant]

Just to be the smartass that I actually am, I'll explain this.

In Sweden, you always go small-larger-largest, or the other way around with dates. So it's either day-month-year or year-month day.

When you start with day, you normally write d(d)/m(m)-(yy), f.e. 11/12-03, or 5/7.

When you start with year, you write (yy)yymmdd, f.e. 880705, or 19880705. If you want to be specific with the year, you write it out, like 19880705. There is also one version where you write 88-07-05, or 1988-07-05.

Thats about it. You pretty much never see dates written out in any other way. If you'd want to confuse the hell out of a Swede, write something like 3-2. I saw that on a sandwich in the US, and it took me about half an hour to figure out that it was the expiration date

[Suzanne]

Thanks everyone for the help. I have enough confusion with the UK dates with my work! Anyway, I'll go with the dd/mm yyyy format even though it will cost me an extra $3 in engraving costs. That seems to look the nicest.

Thanks Again!