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[citation needed] The traditional all-numeric form of writing Gregorian dates in German is the little-endian day.month.year order, using a dot on the line (period or full stop) as the separator (e.g., "15.04.1974" or "15.4.74").
Numbers may be written with or without leading zero in Austria or Switzerland, where they are commonly only discarded in days when literal months are being used (e.g., "09.11.
In Germany, it is not uncommon in casual speech to use numbers to refer to months, rather than their names (e.g. der zweite erste – "the second first" – for 2 January).
In Germany and eastern Europe weekday names are commonly (and according to DIN 1355) abbreviated with two letters (Mo, Di, Mi, Do, Fr, Sa, So), whereas month names (rather than month numbers) are abbreviated with three letters (Jan, Feb, Mrz, Apr, Mai, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Okt, Nov, Dez).
In written German, time is expressed almost exclusively in the 24-hour notation (00:00–23:59), using either a colon or a dot on the line as the separators between hours, minutes, and seconds – e.g. 14:51 or 14.51.
[4] In spoken language, the 24-hour clock has become the dominant form during the second half of the 20th century[citation needed], especially for formal announcements and exact points in time.
On some radio stations, announcers regularly give the current time on both forms, as in "Es ist jetzt vierzehn Uhr einundfünfzig; neun Minuten vor drei" ("It is now fourteen fifty-one; nine minutes to three")[citation needed].
The term controversy may be appropriate insofar as "relativists" often complain about not being able to decode the "absolute" way of telling the time, resulting in missed appointments etc.