date-and-time-formatting-switch:
\@ [ " ] switch-argument [ " ]

A date-and-time-formatting-switch specifies the format of a date or time result. [Note: This switch is sometimes called a picture switch because it allows the use of symbols to represent the format of the field result. end note] If the result of a field is not a date or time, this switch has no effect.

Quotation marks are required around switch-argument if it contains white space; otherwise, they are optional.

If no date-and-time-formatting-switch is present, a date or time result is formatted in an implementation-defined manner.

A date and time switch-argument is made up of a series of picture items.

Date and Time Formatting Picture Items
Picture Item	Description
d	Formats the day of( the week or day of the month as a number without a leading 0 for single-digit days.
dd	Formats the day of the week or day of the month as a number with a leading 0 for single-digit days.
ddd	Formats the day of the week or month in its abbreviated form according to the language specified by the lang element (§2.3.2.18) on the run containing the field instructions.
dddd	Formats the day of the week as its full name according to the language specified by the lang element (§2.3.2.18) on the run containing the field instructions.
M	Formats the month as a number without a leading 0 for single-digit months.
MM	Formats the month as a number with a leading 0 for single-digit months.
MMM	Formats the month in its abbreviated form according to the language specified by the lang element (§2.3.2.18) on the run containing the field instructions.
MMMM	Formats the month as its full name according to the language specified by the lang element (§2.3.2.18) on the run containing the field instructions.
yy	Formats the year as two digits with a leading 0 for years 0–9.
yyyy	Formats the year as four digits.

In the following time formats, a lowercase h indicates that time is based on a 12-hour clock, while uppercase H indicates time is based on a 24-hour clock.

Time Formatting Picture Items
Picture Item	Description
h or H	Formats the hour without a leading 0 for single-digit hours.
hh or HH	Formats the hour with a leading 0 for single-digit hours.
m	Formats the minutes without a leading 0 for single-digit minutes.
mm	Formats the minutes with a leading 0 for single-digit minutes.
am/pm or AM/PM	Formats using an am/AM or pm/PM suffix.

Miscellaneous Formatting Picture Items
Picture Item	Description
Other character	Includes the specified character in the result at that position. [Note: Commonly used characters are colon (:), hyphen (-), asterisk (*), slash (/), and space. end note]
'text'	Includes text in the result.
`numbered-item`	Includes, in Arabic numerals, the number of the preceding item numbered as a caption or resulting from a SEQ field (§2.16.5.63). numbered-item shall be the same name as identifier in that SEQ field.

[Example: When updated in a US-English context on the date and time shown below, the following fields produced these results:

DATE \@ "M/d/yyyy"	1/3/2006
DATE \@ "dddd, MMMM dd, yyyy"	Tuesday, January 03, 2006
DATE \@ "MMMM d, yyyy"	January 3, 2006
DATE \@ "M/d/yy"	1/3/06
DATE \@ "yyyy-MM-dd"	2006-01-03
DATE \@ "d-MMM-yy"	3-Jan-06
DATE \@ "M.d.yyyy"	1.3.2006
DATE \@ "MMM. d, yy"	Jan. 3, 06
DATE \@ "d MMMM yyyy"	3 January 2006
DATE \@ "MMMM yy"	January 06
DATE \@ "MMM-yy"	Jan-06
DATE \@ "M/d/yyyy h:mm am/pm"	1/3/2006 5:28 PM
DATE \@ "M/d/yyyy h:mm:ss am/pm"	1/3/2006 5:28:34 PM
DATE \@ "h:mm am/pm"	5:28 PM
DATE \@ "h:mm:ss am/pm"	5:28:34 PM
DATE \@ "HH:mm"	17:28
DATE \@ "'Today is 'HH:mm:ss"	Today is 17:28:34

end example]