brianary
Months are the craziest, weirdest, stupidest measure humanity has used for this long. ISO8601 week dates make more sense, or even the French Revolutionary Calendar. Humans organize all of society by weeks, not by months. Compare last January to next January, or last February to next February for metrics. Do they have the same number of weekdays vs weekend days? Even if they do, do they happen at the same point in the month so you can compare the flow of the month? Now compare two weeks, and that’s apples to apples. Group by weeks instead of months and your irregular, bumpy graph smooths right out. We only hang on to Gregorian months out of inertia.
I wouldn’t even notice it as unusual, even though it isn’t my usual order. It could vary by region or profession, or maybe it’s just you that notices it this acutely. In plain English emails and other narrative text, I always use “Sat Aug 31” (adding the year only when ambiguous), which is short but complete, and includes the day of the week, which is much more important to humans than the month anyway.