Skip to main content
Rime expands dates and clock times into their spoken form automatically. Most common formats work without any preprocessing.
For a tour of text normalization across all categories, see Text normalization. For specific patterns Rime doesn’t expand cleanly, see Pre-normalizing text.

​
Dates

Rime supports a variety of date formats, with year:
FormatExampleReads as
MM/DD/YYYY10/12/2024october twelfth, twenty twenty-four
YYYY-MM-DD (ISO)2021-03-15the fifteenth of march twenty twenty-one
M.D.YYYY8.8.2018august eighth twenty eighteen
Month name + day + yearApril 2, 2024april second, twenty twenty-four
Day + month name + year5 July 2015the fifth of july twenty fifteen
Year alone1998nineteen ninety-eight
Month + yearMay 2019may twenty nineteen
Month + ordinal day (no year)January 1st, Jan. 1january first
US (MM/DD/YYYY) and ISO (YYYY-MM-DD) forms read with slightly different surface phrasing — “may twelfth…” vs. “the fifteenth of march…”. If wording consistency matters, pick one format.

​
Times

FormatExampleReads as
Clock + meridiem3:45pm, 10:30 AMthree forty-five PM; ten thirty AM
24-hour15:45fifteen forty-five
On-the-hour6:00six o’clock
Dotted meridiem6 a.m., 2 o'clock p. m.six AM; two o’clock PM
With time zone9:00 AM PSTnine AM PST
Word formsnoon, midnight, quarter past 6, half past 6as written
Ranges9:20-9:45nine twenty to nine forty-five
Both am/pm and a.m./p.m. are accepted, with or without spaces between the time and the meridiem.

​
Known gaps

A few specific date and time patterns aren’t reliably expanded — most commonly MM/DD without a year (04/21), month-and-year alone (07/2025), bare hours with meridiem (3pm without :00), decade names (1990s), financial periods (Q1 2025, 1H 2024), and European 15h30 times. For the full list and a drop-in prompt template to handle them, see Pre-normalizing text.