International Written Communication: Dates & Numbers

"Now, something I want to mention to you has to do with content. And this really kind of goes for business letters or personal letters. It's something that you should be very aware of that could be confusing to your reader are dates. Now it's very interesting--here in America, we tend to write, we would write Aug. 27, 2008. Or we might even write out the word August. Well, in lots of different cultures they write their dates and their numbers differently. They might write a twenty-seven, August, 2008. There's lots of different variations of how people do numbers. So if you are going to include a date or any type of numerical listings or even just numbers in your letter, than you want to find out how that particular culture writes letters. Same goes for telephone numbers and addresses. We do all of that very differently. So, be real aware of how their numerical scheme works."