Stop using confusing date formats in your charts!

   

One of my pet peeves is dates in charts that are ambiguous:

   

This can be easily fixed by simply choosing different date formats:

   

What, exactly, makes these date formats clear and unambiguous? Two things:

The month is alphabetic (“Feb”, “September”, etc.), not numeric (“02”, “9”, etc.).

The year is four numbers (“2024”, “2015”, etc.), not two (“24”, “15”, etc.)

Here are a few more date formats that meet these criteria and so are clear and unambiguous:

   

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