In British English dates are usually written as given below:

26 May 1979

30 October 2003

Note that the names of months always begin with capital letters.

Some people put a comma before the year. This is particularly common when the date comes inside a sentence.

18 October, 2003

29 January, 2008

My son was born on 18 October, 2003.

Another common practice is to add the last two letters of the number word to the day.

18th November, 2009 (OR 18 October, 2009)

4th October, 2005 (OR 4 October, 2005)

Sometimes dates are written entirely in numbers. Several formats are possible.

26/3/2001

26-3-2001

26.3.2001

Note that dates are written differently in American English. Americans write the month first and put a comma before the year.

March 30, 2003

April 1, 2004

All-figure dates are interpreted differently in British and American English. This is because British people put the day first. Americans, on the other hand, start with the month.

Compare:

6.4.2004 means 6 April 2004 in Britain whereas it means June 4 2004 in America.

Months with longer names are usually abbreviated in writing.

Jan  = January

Feb  = February

Mar = March

Apr = April

Aug = August

Sept = September

Oct = October

Nov = November

Dec = December

Decades

The names of decades are usually written like this:

the nineteen sixties = the 1960s

the nineteen twenties = the 1920s

Speaking about dates

To talk about the date, we use it’s.

It’s April the first.

To ask about dates, we usually use one of the following structures:

What’s the date today?

What date is your wedding anniversary?

What date is your birthday?

BC and AD

The abbreviation BC stands for Before Christ. The abbreviation AD stands for Anno Domini – Latin for ‘in the year of the Lord’. Note that in writing BD follows the date. AD can come before or after the date.

55 BC

AD 53 or 53 AD