[loeg]

Atwood's an American. Writers will write what they know… they're hardly obligated to use an unfamiliar measurement system for your convenience.

[mooism2]

Well, it depends. If Atwood's aiming at an international audience, then he should use both measurement systems. If he's happy with an American audience then there's no reason for him to bother.

I note that the date of his blog post is the international-friendly “November 19, 2012” rather than the American numeric “11/19/2012”. But internationalising dates like this is easier than providing measurements in dual units.

[bjcy]

Us Americans do use "Month DD, YYYY" quite frequently, so I don't think that his usage of it is done purposefully.

[sliverstorm]

Indeed. MM/DD/YY is used informally and for datapoints (e.g. the Date field when you sign a form), but any time you are writing formally (e.g. a letter) you use Month DD, YYYY.

It's almost like MM/DD/YY is the abbreviation of "Month DD, YYYY"

[moe]

XX/XX/YY is a terrible format and I wish people would stop using it.

01/02/03 can be January 2nd or February 1st, and often there's not enough context to determine which was meant.

[Ygg2]

Actually it can be February 3rd. I've seen YY/MM/DD format in use. But yeah it's horrible.

[TeMPOraL]

> If Atwood's aiming at an international audience, then he should use both measurement systems.

That, and also Atwood's popularity among American readers gives him a great opportunity to encourage them to use metric.

In the meantime, use http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4751410 :).