61–70 of 221 posts
I am native to the united states and, to this day, I still do not fully get what time "12:00 AM" and "12:00 PM" mean. I try to set meetings for 12.01PM. If I absolutely must meet exactly at noon, I start the meeting "at noon".
12AM = Midnight
The way to remember this that finally clicked for me is that 'A' means 'ante', 'P' means 'post', and 'M' means Meridian some Latin word that means the sun is directly overhead. Or more practically speaking: noon. 12:00 PM is noon because one minute later, the sun is past being directly above. That is, it's 12:01 Post Meridiem. Since it would obviously be nonsensical for 12:00 AM to be immediately followed by 12:01 PM…
You jump from "sun is overhead in 12 hours" (12 AM) to "sun is overhead in 1 hour" (1 AM) when you follow that logic.
The 12 hour-system is broken and should go away.
Do you know what 12:01 AM means? 12:00 AM is one minute before that.
But you can also say: "Do you know what 11:59PM means? 12:00PM is one minute after that" Midday and midnight are the points at which AM/PM change and you can't logically differentiate them by appending AM or PM. You just have to know the arbitrary cultural convention that midday is PM.
12:00 and 12:01 are both in the 12:XX hour, but 11:59 and 12:00 are not. Of course the whole thing is arbitrary, but the convention is that the 12:00 - 12:59 hour is PM, rather than just 12:00.
I have no idea if that’s a good explanation, but it helped contextualise what in the end is a convention.
In my personal experience most English-speaking people will either say “midnight” or use the military convention of 00:00 or 24:00 hours.
Royal Observatory Greenwich explains it succinctly[1]:
> When most people say 12pm, typically they're talking about the middle of the day: 12 noon. When they say 12am, they normally mean 12 midnight.
> While most people follow this convention, technically it's not quite right – as you'll see from the definition of am and pm below. To avoid any confusion (and to make sure you arrive on time), it might be best to say 12 noon or 12 midnight instead.
US English is similar[2]:
> The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Fourth Edition, 2000) has a usage note on this topic: "Strictly speaking, 12 a.m. denotes midnight, and 12 p.m. denotes noon, but there is sufficient confusion over these uses to make it advisable to use 12 noon and 12 midnight where clarity is required."
> Many U.S. style guides, and NIST's "Frequently asked questions (FAQ)" web page, recommend that it is clearest if one refers to "noon" or "12:00 noon" and "midnight" or "12:00 midnight" (rather than to "12:00 p.m." and "12:00 a.m."). Some other style guides suggest "12:00 n" for noon and "12:00 m" for midnight.
[1] https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/noon-12-am-or-12-pm
[2] https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/66633/is-it-corr...
Do Europeans just not have analog clocks or watches anymore?
Do you know what 12:01 AM means? 12:00 AM is one minute before that.
A lot of my exams will use the time 11:59pm instead of 12:00am to avoid confusion like this