Date and time notation in the Netherlands

In the Netherlands, dates are written using the little-endian pattern "day–month–year" as is usual elsewhere in Europe and many other countries.

In written language, time is expressed in the 24-hour notation, with or without leading zero, using a full stop or colon as a separator, sometimes followed by the word uur (hour) or its abbreviation u.

Instead, an apposition is added, for instance 21:00 is said as "9 uur 's avonds" (9 o'clock in the evening).

For example, 17:21 might be pronounced as "zeventien uur eenentwintig" (seventeen hours twenty-one).

Hours over 12 are not usually combined with phrasings using "half", "quarter", "to", or "past".