title: Date and time notation in New Zealand
text: # Date and time notation in New Zealand
  
  Date and time notation in New Zealand most commonly records the date using the day-month-year format (27 July 2023), while the ISO 8601 format (2023-07-27) is increasingly used for all-numeric dates, such as date of birth. The time can be written using either the 12-hour clock (2:58 pm) or the 24-hour clock (14:58).
  
  ## Date
  
  New Zealanders typically write the date with the day leading, as in the United Kingdom and Australia:
  
  * 27 July 2023
  * 2023-07-27 or 27/07/2023
  
  The month–day–year order (July 27, 2023) is sometimes used, usually informally in the mastheads of magazines, schools, newspapers, advertisements, video games, news, and TV shows. However, similar to the UK, the MDY in numeric-only form (07/27/2023) is never used as it can be easily confused for the DMY format.
  
  Weeks are most identified by the last day of the week, either the Friday in business (e.g., "week ending 19/1") or the Sunday in other use (e.g., "week ending 21/1").
  
  ## Time
  
  The New Zealand Government readability guidelines recommend writing showing the time in a 12-hour format, although the 24-hour clock (14:58) can be used in technical fields such as military, aviation, computing, navigation, transportation and the sciences. The before noon/after noon qualifier is usually written as "am" or "pm". A colon is the preferred time separator. New Zealanders are also recommended to use "midnight" instead of "00:00" in writing. UTC time is used in some cases by the New Zealand land service information data service.
  
  