http://unicode.org/reports/tr35/tr35-6.html#Date_Format_Patterns

Appendix F: Date Format Patterns

A date pattern is a string of characters, where specific strings of characters are replaced with date and time data from a calendar when formatting or used to generate data for a calendar when parsing. The following are the characters used in patterns to show the appropriate formats for a given locale. The following are examples:

Characters may be used multiple times. For example, if y is used for the year, ‘yy‘ might produce ‘99‘, whereas ‘yyyy‘ produces ‘1999‘. For most numerical fields, the number of characters specifies the field width. For example, if h is the hour, ‘h‘ might produce ‘5‘, but ‘hh‘ produces ‘05‘. For some characters, the count specifies whether an abbreviated or full form should be used, but may have other choices, as given below.

Two single quotes represents a literal single quote, either inside or outside single quotes. Text within single quotes is not interpreted in any way (except for two adjacent single quotes). Otherwise all ASCII letter from a to z and A to Z are reserved as syntax characters, and require quoting if they are to represent literal characters. In addition, certain ASCII punctuation characters may become variable in the future (eg ":" being interpreted as the time separator and ‘/‘ as a date separator, and replaced by respective locale-sensitive characters in display).

Note: the counter-intuitive use of 5 letters for the narrow form of weekdays and months is forced by backwards compatibility.

All non-letter character represent themselves in a pattern, except for the single quote. It is used to ‘escape‘ letters. Two single quotes in a row, whether inside or outside a quoted sequence, represent a ‘real‘ single quote.

F.1 Localized Pattern Characters (deprecated)

These are characters that can be used when displaying a date pattern to an end user. This can occur, for example, when a spreadsheet allows users to specify date patterns. Whatever is in the string is substituted one-for-one with the characters "GyMdkHmsSEDFwWahKzYe", with the above meanings. Thus, for example, if "J" is to be used instead of "Y" to mean Year, then the string would be: "GyMdkHmsSEDFwWahKzJe".

This element is deprecated. It is recommended instead that a more sophisticated UI be used for localization, such as using icons to represent the different formats (and lengths) in the Date Field Symbol Table.

F.2 AM / PM

Even for countries where the customary date format only has a 24 hour format, both the am and pm localized strings must be present and must be distinct from one another. Note that as long as the 24 hour format is used, these strings will normally never be used, but for testing and unusual circumstances they must be present.

F.3 Eras

There are only two values for an era in a Gregorian calendar, "BC" and "AD". These values can be translated into other languages, like "a.C." and and "d.C." for Spanish, but there are no other eras in the Gregorian calendar. Other calendars have a different numbers of eras. Care should be taken when translating the era names for a specific calendar.

F.4 Week of Year

Values calculated for the Week of Year field range from 1 to 53 for the Gregorian calendar (they may have different ranges for other calendars). Week 1 for a year is the first week that contains at least the specified minimum number of days from that year. Weeks between week 1 of one year and week 1 of the following year are numbered sequentially from 2 to 52 or 53 (if needed). For example, January 1, 1998 was a Thursday. If the first day of the week is MONDAY and the minimum days in a week is 4 (these are the values reflecting ISO 8601 and many national standards), then week 1 of 1998 starts on December 29, 1997, and ends on January 4, 1998. However, if the first day of the week is SUNDAY, then week 1 of 1998 starts on January 4, 1998, and ends on January 10, 1998. The first three days of 1998 are then part of week 53 of 1997.

Values are similarly calculated for the Week of Month.

F.5 Week Elements

firstDay

A number indicating which day of the week is considered the ‘first‘ day, for calendar purposes. Because the ordering of days may vary between calendar, keywords are used for this value, such as sun, mon,... These values will be replaced by the localized name when they are actually used.

minDays (Minimal Days in First Week)

Minimal days required in the first week of a month or year. For example, if the first week is defined as one that contains at least one day, this value will be 1. If it must contain a full seven days before it counts as the first week, then the value would be 7.

weekendStart, weekendEnd

Indicates the day and time that the weekend starts or ends. As with firstDay, keywords are used instead of numbers.