At 08:11 PM 3/2/03 -0800, Sean wrote:
On the contrary, the form 2 March 2003 simply IS correct in American English. The Chicago Manual of Style prefers "that in all text, including notes and bibliographies, exact dates be written in the sequence day-month-year, without internal punctuation." Rule 8.36.
There is no one body entitled to name US usage, and the University of Chicago Press certainly isn't. CMOS is what they want for the books they publish, no more and no less. Others often find it useful: but when I worked for a magazine that followed Chicago on most things, we set dates in the form March 3, 2003, not 3 March 2003.