It’s almost time to say happy new year and good riddance to 2023, so here’s how to write about dates and years in 2024.

This is based on the Australian government’s style manual and the most common usage that I’ve seen over the past few years as an editor of digital content.

The longest day of the year is fast approaching… or on the other side of the world, their shortest day of the world! So I thought we’d talk about how to write dates and days correctly in business writing.

(Image source: AI artwork of cats sitting next to window, watching fireworks, generated using Gencraft.com.)

Basic format for listing dates

We write the number, then the month, then the year, like this:

14 December 2023

When there’s not enough space for this format, you would shorten it like this:

14/12/2023

When you need to add what day of the week it is, you write:

Thursday 14 December 2023

Personally, I would prefer it with a comma – Thursday, 14 December 2023 – but if you need to strictly follow Australian government style, there’s no comma.

When you need to add what time it will be, you can write:

Thursday 14 December 2023 at 3:00pm

or

3:00pm on Thursday 14 December 2023

or

3:00pm, Thursday 14 December 2023

Talking about financial years?

We write it with an en dash, not a slash, with no letters attached:

2023–24

not 2023/24 or FY2024 or FY2023/2024 … or any other variations I haven’t seen yet.

Image source: imgflip.com using image of Dwight from The Office.