Ah, yeah, that would never work over here. Merrikins don’t do math, y’know? And thinking is already hard enough without having to doublethink.
If I saw 12M, I would assume the person meant 12 midnight, not 12 noon. So even that’s not ambiguous.
That’s what 00:00 and 24:00 are for. 00:00 is the midnight that begins a day, and 24:00 is the midnight that ends it. Furthermore, 24:00 of one day is the same instant as 00:00 of the following day.
And this is why I like 24 hour time.
Little hijack, but why was the DA wasting his time on this? Given, a) she was clearly OK with him being there (before the argument), and b) the order was expiring within 12 hours at most anyway, what exactly is the injustice the DA is trying to resolve? I understand that the police might feel they don’t have any option but arresting him, but surely there’s enough prosecutorial discretion to not take action because he and the ex forgot to lift an order that was expiring anyway?
Actually, they can both logically refer to midnight, but neither makes sense for noon.
Is there any notation that actually uses 24:00? Here in semi-24-hour-clock land I’ve never seen it.
I’ve seen it used occasionally in train schedules when a train trip extends past midnight and they want to consider it as belonging to the previous day. But they don’t do that on the trains here; the schedules go from 23:59 to 00:00.
If I remember correctly, the defendant had a criminal record that made the prosecutor uncomfortable dropping the charges. A lot of prosecutors will drop the charges in cases like these, especially if they’re more experienced and realize that (a) justice dictates that it should be dismissed or (b) the case is an absolute dog and the defense lawyer will eat them alive with it. Misdemeanor prosecutors are usually the junior DA’s, and a lot of times when they’re new on the job they feel that if the officer filed it and sent it to them they’re obligated to prosecute it, not realizing that neither the officer nor the boss will care if they drop it. I’m not saying that was the case with this particular DA and case, but it’s been known to happen.
I have no idea what you mean by it starts in 35 minutes.
“effective at 12AM on July 15” means, 12am on July 15, the new day, 00:00 on July 15!. Why are you saying it starts in 35 mintues? You must be putting way to much thought into this. If it’s a timezone issue, then just convert.
And agreed on 24 hour clock, it really is best. Commonly used in IT, and yes you would say Nineteen Hundred hours verbally like that. But not uncommon to just say 7pm to co-workers, and I or they would interpret 19:00 in our mind. Well for me anyway, because I’m used to 24hrs.
It’s 35 minutes after when he started that post.
Yep, I see that now.
I would intellectually prefer to use the 24 hour clock, but I know that I would never get any sleep.
You see, at night my brain starts to obsess about the tiniest little distractions, and the magic moment when the digits change from 23:59 to 00:00 would be so irresistable that my brain would force me to keep waking up every 30 seconds so it could observe the mystical event.
Up until now I did not know what AM and PM stood for. Just never came up.
I actually didn’t realise that the 24-hour clock was so much less used in America. As jjimm says, both styles are routinely used here, the 24-hour clock perhaps more in contexts where precision is required or expected, such as in timetables or timer displays. Nobody outside the army and the emergency services uses the 24-hour clock in everyday speech, though.
I understand that in Germany regular people do sometimes say things like “nineteen hours”, although they also use the 12-hour clock in casual speech.
It is fairly rare and people refer to it as “military time.” I have my iPhone and computer clock set to 24-hours, and I’ve had people ask me (as recently as last week) if I was in the military. I don’t look like the military type, so this surprises me, but it also surprises me at how people notice that my phone is set to 24-hour time and that the immediate thought is to associate it with the military.
Virtually all advertising and things like TV schedules use am/pm. Signs in store windows do, too. But I doubt there are many people in the U.S. who don’t know how the 24-hour clock works or how to use it. In the engineering, broadcasting, scientific, and software worlds, the 24-hour clock is standard.
I would imagine: Because when it’s light outside, 11:58 is in the morning, and so is 11:59. Therefore, 12:00 is also in the morning. After 12 is the afternoon.
When I was in tech school, I used to have a sergeant who, if he had a deadline for us that was effective at midnight (usually the only time it came up was returning from leave), he would have it effective, say, January 3, 2008, 11:59:59PM (amusingly enough, he didn’t say 23:59:59, because that would just confuse the poor airmen). It nicely illustrated the point he was trying to get across, and prevented any foolish airmen from showing up a day late and getting in deep shit for being AWOL.
And yeah, if someone says some social gathering is happening “Saturday at Midnight” I find myself having to ask “So, is that midnight after Friday, or midnight before Sunday?”
Typically, of course, the response is: “Saturday. At Midnight.”
Typically, this is my signal that whatever it is couldn’t possibly be important enough for me to actually show up.
When I was in Basic, the dorm guard shifts were set up on the half-hour (probably to avoid such confusion regarding the 12’s during the day). The dorm guard shift that began at 12:30AM (or 00:30) was lovingly referred to as the “Balls Thirty Shift”.
Sad to say, it took me longer than I’m proud of to get that joke.:smack:
I set most (but not all-- some won’t permit it) of my clocks and other time-keeping devices to 24-hour time. It just makes more sense. I first realized the joys of simple, non-confusing time-keeping when I lived in Europe for a while. It’s fa little odd to me that people think I am pretentious if they realize I operate on 24-hour time. That’s why I don’t advertise that I do.
Yeah, it just makes sense. But people don’t always like sensible things.