It was November 18, and my secretary came to me in a bit of a panic. We had just received a new order for filing a patent application from one of our Japanese clients, which included the following English instructions:

Please file this application in the middle of November!

My secretary was worried, because the instructions seemed unclear and ambiguous to her and we were already 18 days into November. What does “middle of November” mean? November has 30 days, so the middle is exactly Nov. 15, isn’t it? But that day was already in the past.