A few days every month, I prepare videos for Drafting Clearer Contracts: On Demand, my library of videos and automated quizzes. To do that, I revisit what MSCD has to say about a given topic. Sometimes, that prompts me to rethink how I’ve approached a given issue.
That’s what happened yesterday, when I revisited the discussion of day and date at MSCD § 10.15–.16. Below is my revised take. I arrived at it with the help of a brief back-and-forth with Claude. None of the English-usage guides I have on hand have anything to say about date versus day.
I acknowledge that nothing significant is riding on date versus day, so you might wonder why I bother saying anything at all about it, let alone revisiting it. I do so because I want to be aware of what is or isn’t at stake in any choice. And because I always want to make the better choice, even if nothing significant is riding on it. I’m compelled to work to make things better. That urge is something I touch on in my new article.
If you have any thoughts on my revised take, I’d be happy to hear them.
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Date and Day
The word day refers to a unit of time. As in It was sunny the day I returned home. And I was born on the day of Pearl Harbor.
Use instead the word date if what is being referred to the point on a calendar that a given day occupies. As in Please insert your date of birth. And I’ve memorized key dates in American history. (It’s awkward to say I was born on the date of Pearl Harbor—what’s being invoked is what happened, not the specific point it occupies on the calendar.)
Drafters are prone to overusing the word date, as in Those values may be determined on either (1) the date of purchase or (2) the date the person became a director, whichever value is greater. And plus interest from the beginning of the date the disputed payment was originally due through the date before the date of payment. Both those examples refer to events that have yet to happen, so they don’t serve to highlight points on a calendar. Using day instead would work better.
But using date instead of day can’t cause confusion, so nothing would be gained by insisting on one over the other. For example, closing day is unobjectionable, but instances of closing date greatly outnumber closing day, and insisting on changing closing date to closing day would be pedantic. But it would be wrongheaded to insist on changing closing day to closing date.
