You can design your own format patterns for dates and times from the list of symbols in the following table:

> Symbol | Meaning | Presentation | Example
> --- | --- | --- | ---
> G | era designator | Text | AD
> y | year | Number | 1996
> M | month in year | Text & Number | July & 07
> d | day in month | Number | 10
> h | hour in am/pm (1-12) | Number | 12
> H | hour in day (0-23) | Number | 0
> m | minute in hour | Number | 30
> s | second in minute | Number | 55
> S | millisecond | Number | 978
> E | day in week | Text | Tuesday
> D | day in year | Number | 189
> F | day of week in month | Number | 2 (2nd Wed in July)
> w | week in year | Number | 27
> W | week in month | Number | 2
> a | am/pm marker | Text | PM
> k | hour in day (1-24) | Number | 24
> K | hour in am/pm (0-11) | Number | 0
> z | time zone | Text | Pacific Standard Time
> ' | escape for text | Delimiter | (none)
> ' | single quote | Literal | '

Characters that are not letters are treated as quoted text. That is, they will appear in the formatted text even if they are not enclosed within single quotes.

The number of symbol letters you specify also determines the format. For example, if the "zz" pattern results in "PDT," then the "zzzz" pattern generates "Pacific Daylight Time." The following table summarizes these rules:

> Presentation | Number of Symbols | Result
> --- | --- | ---
> Text | 1 - 3 | abbreviated form, if one exists
> Text | >= 4 | full form
> Number | minimum number of digits is required | shorter numbers are padded with zeros (for a year, if the count of 'y' is 2, then the year is truncated to 2 digits)
> Text & Number | 1 - 2 | text form
> Text & Number | 3 | number form