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Here is the time order that I found quite confusing in a sentence, following with the sample sentence that I saw from a piece of teaching material:

The school party is on June 8th at 8 o'clock in the evening.

However, I wonder if it can be rewritten as the following?

The school party is at 8 o'clock in the evening on June 8th

If not, may I know the rule of the order?

KillingTime
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Lenson W
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    I wonder why you found it confusing? It seems common sense (in any language!) that readers need to know the date first (will I be free on that day?) and the time second. No grammatical rule, just practicality. – Kate Bunting Jan 07 '23 at 08:45
  • Note that in your revised version it's possible to use a different preposition for the final element: The school party is at 8 o'clock in the evening of* June 8th. That associates the object of the preposition (the date) with the preceding noun* (evening) rather than being an adverbial element linking back to the main verb (is). Here's the relevant usage chart. – FumbleFingers Jan 07 '23 at 13:27
  • Does this answer your question? The 'royal order of adverbs' (The article I quote looks at the rule of thumb for listing adverbs / adverbials of the same category (eg space, time) in order of increasing specificity. Or Is there any rule of order for time, date, place, building, etc? (Austin Dean's answer.) – Edwin Ashworth Jan 07 '23 at 17:18

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Both usages seem to be fairly common. If you search google for "at * PM on * " and "on * at * PM" You will get large number of hits for both (though former seems lot more popular than latter).

However, I think the order does have a significance. If you want to lay stress on the date , you put the date first. Otherwise, when the date or day is fairly well known (for instance a Sunday mass or an inaugural speech) the time is written first. Looking at some of the examples shown by google search might help. I don't know if a formal rule exists in this regard.

R.S.
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  • The ratio of usages, 69 : 72, is extremely near to unity as these things go (ie at first glance, equally commonly used). Of course, other pairings ('at 8 o'clock next Friday' '...', etc) may show different results. The availability of adding stress by choosing the order is a good point. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 07 '23 at 16:51
  • Searches for "at * o'clock last Monday" and "last Monday at * o'clock" seem to give remarkably similar results. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 07 '23 at 17:11