Ambiguity Poll: What does "Saturday at midnight" mean to you?

[Elyanna]

@Kyla

I had a paper due at Tuesday at midnight earlier this week (to be turned in online). I had a moment of confusion, too, but eventually decided that it was due at almost-Wednesday. I got it back today (got an A!) and the professor didn’t say anything about a problem, so I guess I got it right.

I had a professor last quarter that had every paper due at a midnight. Someone asked, every time, which midnight she meant.

Saturday midnight comes before Sunday morning.

[panache45]

It’s the midnight separating Saturday from Sunday.

[beowulff]

From Wikipedia:

The use of “12:00 midnight” or “midnight” is still problematic because it does not distinguish between the midnight at the start of a particular day and the midnight at its end. To avoid confusion and error, some U.S. style guides recommend either clarifying “midnight” with other context clues, or not referring to midnight at all. For an example of the latter method, “midnight” is replaced with “11:59 p.m.” for the end of a day or “12:01 a.m.” for the start of the next day. That has become common in the United States in legal contracts and for airplane, bus, or train schedules, though some schedules use other conventions.
The 24-hour clock notation avoids all of those ambiguities by using 00:00 for midnight at the start of the day and 12:00 for noon. From 23:59:59 the time shifts (one second later) to 00:00:00, the beginning of the next day. Some variants of 24-hour notation (including the world standard ISO 8601) use 24:00 when referring to a midnight at the end of a day.

[Eyebrows_0f_Doom]

Saturday at midnight means late Saturday night before Sunday morning.

[Little_Plastic_Ninja]

Saturday midnight usually means just before Sunday morning, but I always ask to make sure. I have been burned before.

[Chimera]

@panache45

It’s the midnight separating Saturday from Sunday.

Bingo.

I think of it this way: Night = Late in the Day. Morning = Early in the Day.

So if you said “Midnight Saturday night”, it’s Saturday at Midnight, or the same as saying “Midnight Sunday morning”.

To take that a step further, if you said “2am Saturday night”, I’d know that you were actually talking about “2am Sunday morning”, but having been up continuously to that point, you still tend to think of it as “Saturday”, because it’s all the same day so far.

[seodoa]

I’ve seen some train schedules here skirt this confusion by using 24:00. Some even go further than that: If the last train on Saturday leaves at 01:24 on Sunday, they write that the train leaves at 25:24!

Like this one.

[Merejane]

I agree with Saturday night into Sunday morning.

The way I think of it is, when I was a teenager and had a midnight curfew – so that my parents would say “Make sure you’re home by midnight!” as I was walking out the door sometime Saturday evening – they weren’t talking about earlier that day! But that really just means that their conception of midnight and mine are the same, which isn’t surprising. But still – I would have thought most people think of it that way.

[beowulff]

@Merejane

I agree with Saturday night into Sunday morning.

The way I think of it is, when I was a teenager and had a midnight curfew – so that my parents would say “Make sure you’re home by midnight!” as I was walking out the door sometime Saturday evening – they weren’t talking about earlier that day! But that really just means that their conception of midnight and mine are the same, which isn’t surprising. But still – I would have thought most people think of it that way.

Yes, but “By Midnight” isn’t very ambiguous…

[Bijou_Drains]

I say Sat. night too.

BTW , I remember the guy on Carson with parking ticket. I wonder what happened with that.

[5-HT]

It would mean 12:00am Sunday to me, I would be shocked if someone meant Friday Night/Saturday Morning.

[Cervaise]

Depends. If I’m talking to people, it means the joining point between Saturday night and Sunday morning, as most responders here have said. But if I’m doing something computer-related, the reference could very well mean 12am Saturday, i.e. the joining point between Friday night and Saturday morning, so I would need to double-check.

[Sunspace]

@beowulff

Only because of sloppiness.
There is NO 24:00 on a 24-hour clock. The day runs from 00:00:00 to 23:59:59…

Your reference does indeed say that there can be a 24:00 on a 24-hour clock. I agree that it’s not usually necessary (Saturday 24:00 is the same instant as Sunday 00:00); but, as other posters have mentioned, when discussing things that extend an hour or so past midnight and then end for the night, using 24:00 and even things like 24:15 can be useful.

[runcible_spoon]

Saturday MIDNIGHT is the MIDdle of Saturday NIGHT, to me.

[Nava]

The second option.

Saturday night is the night after saturday day. Saturday midnight is the midnight after saturday day.

The hours between friday midnight and saturday’s dawn are saturday wee hours.

[madmonk28]

The second option. If someone said Saturday Midnight, it would mean one minute after 11:59 pm, Saturday.

[Gangster_Octopus]

@madmonk28

The second option. If someone said Saturday Midnight, it would mean one minute after 11:59 pm, Saturday.

Exactly, and I think it is obvious why folks feel that way…midnight, Staurday night corresponds to Saturday midnight, otherwise it woudl corresponding to Saturday morning which seems counter-intuive.

[Winston_Smith]

“Midnight on Saturday” = time to “rotate the tires”

[Freudian_Slit]

Damn, Jragon, looks like you and me are in the minority. Though the more I think about it, the more I’m starting to feel intuitively like Saturday midnight should be a Saturday night thing. Hmm.

[pravnik]

@Hari_Seldon

I don’t know the answer (totally ambiguous IMHO) but let me recount a story that was recently in the ndws up here in the frozen north. The Ontario Teachers’ Federation was about to buy Bell Canada or a large piece thereof. (Why they would buy into a sunset business is beyond my ken.) The intent to purchase had a clause in it that said that Bell’s accountant had to provide certain financial assurances by 12:00 AM on a certain date. For the sake of argument, let’s say Dec. 15. It was a date in December at any rate. So at 11:59 PM on Dec. 14, the Teachers notified Bell that, the assurances not having been received, they were withdrawing their offer. Bell replied that they jumped the gun by 24 hours and were going to be sued for several billion dollars.

I had a similar case, but criminal. A defendant had gotten back together with a girlfriend who had a protective order against him, but then they both got drunk and got in an argument, and she called the cops on him. The protective order was set to expire at 12:00 am on that date, so the cops arrested him, thinking it was still in force until midnight that evening. The guy had a pretty good record and the DA’s offer was pretty stiff, so I asked for a bench trial, knowing that the judge travels a lot and knows that there’s a very good reason why planes take off at 12:01 pm and 11:59 am, and why the Texas DPS absolutely will not issue an occupational license with 12:00 pm or am on it. The DA was mystified because he thought it was an open and shut case, but he made a sweetheart offer the day before trial that my guy felt like he couldn’t afford to turn down. I told the DA afterwards why I’d set it for trial and how disappointed I was; I was really looking forward to cross-examining the arresting officers about exactly when 12:00 pm and 12:00 am were.

A multi-billion dollar claim, though? Yikes. All those highly paid lawyers and executives, and not one copped to the fact that 12:00 pm and am should be avoided in legal documents like the plague!