Fixing Quarto Blog Date Formatting

Swapped strftime tokens for Pandoc’s date syntax

Over the past two hours I tracked down a formatting bug in the blog dates and fixed it cleanly.

What I did

• Found that the date format in _quarto.yml used strftime tokens (%b %-d, %Y ...).
• Quarto expects Pandoc date tokens, so the output was broken.
• Replaced the format with:

MMM D, YYYY [at] h:mm a

• Committed and pushed the change.

What I learned

Quarto’s date-format is Pandoc’s format syntax, not strftime. If the output looks garbled (e.g., %b %-3, %Y amt %-I:%2 %p), it’s almost always a token mismatch.

Obstacles

The confusing part is that both systems look similar at a glance. The fix is just using the right token set.

Next steps

• Watch a couple builds to confirm dates render consistently.
• If needed, tweak the format (e.g., drop “at” or switch to 24‑hour time).