What is ISO 8601-1 about?
ISO 8601-1 is the first part of the ISO 8601 series of standards that is applicable to basic rules for the representation of the Gregorian calendar. ISO 8601-1 details basic rules for the prevention of misunderstanding the date and time format representations for information interchange. ISO 8601-1 specifies representations of dates of the Gregorian calendar and times based on the 24-hour clock, as well as composite elements of them, as character strings for use in information interchange. It is also applicable for representing times and time shifts based on Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
Note: ISO 8601-1 excludes the representation of date elements from nonGregorian calendars or times not from the 24hour clock.
Note: ISO 8601-1 does not address character encoding of representations specified in this document.
Who is ISO 8601-1 for?
ISO 8601-1 on information interchange is useful for:
- Historians
Why should you use ISO 8601-1?
The Gregorian calendar provides a time scale consisting of a series of contiguous calendar years, each identified by a year number represented by an integer, greater than that of the immediately preceding calendar year by 1. ISO 8601-1 allows the identification of calendar years by their year number for years both before and after the introduction of the Gregorian calendar.
The purpose of ISO 8601-1 is to provide a standard set of date and time format representations for information interchange, in order to minimize the risk of misinterpretation, confusion, and their consequences. ISO 8601-1 specifies a set of date and time format representations utilizing numbers, alphabets, and symbols defined in ISO/IEC 646. These representations are meant to be both human recognizable and machine-readable. ISO 8601-1 retains the most commonly used expressions for date and time of day and their representations from earlier International Standards in the field, including earlier editions of ISO 8601-1 and its predecessors.