Is midday 12pm or 12am

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Simple right? 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 some 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. Alternatively, you could use the hour clock system, where is noon and or is midnight. Noon is therefore neither 'ante' am nor 'post' pm meridiem.

Is midday 12pm or 12am

The hour clock is a time convention in which the 24 hours of the day are divided into two periods: a. The hour clock has been developed since the second millennium BC and reached its modern form in the 16th century. The hour time convention is common in several English-speaking nations and former British colonies, as well as a few other countries. There is no widely accepted convention for how midday and midnight should be represented: in English-speaking countries, "12 p. The natural day-and-night division of a calendar day forms the fundamental basis as to why each day is split into two cycles. Originally there were two cycles: one cycle which could be tracked by the position of the Sun day , followed by one cycle which could be tracked by the Moon and stars night. This eventually evolved into the two hour periods which are used today, one called "a. Noon itself is rarely abbreviated today; but if it is, it is denoted "m. The hour clock can be traced back as far as Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt. The Romans also used a hour clock : daylight was divided into 12 equal hours thus hours having varying length throughout the year and the night was divided into four watches. The first mechanical clocks in the 14th century, if they had dials at all, showed all 24 hours using the hour analog dial , influenced by astronomers' familiarity with the astrolabe and sundial and by their desire to model the Earth's apparent motion around the Sun. In Northern Europe these dials generally used the hour numbering scheme in Roman numerals but showed both a. This is known as the double-XII system and can be seen on many surviving clock faces, such as those at Wells and Exeter.

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We will also see some other useful words and phrases that can crop up when we need to tell the time, or ask what the time is. OK, but what if someone talks about something happening at midnight on Tuesday? Is that 12am or 12pm. Is it the night between Monday and Tuesday or between Tuesday and Wednesday? Some will say midnight is 12am , and therefore that midday or noon is 12pm.

We will also see some other useful words and phrases that can crop up when we need to tell the time, or ask what the time is. OK, but what if someone talks about something happening at midnight on Tuesday? Is that 12am or 12pm. Is it the night between Monday and Tuesday or between Tuesday and Wednesday? Some will say midnight is 12am , and therefore that midday or noon is 12pm. When we talk about midnight last night or midnight tonight, the meaning is clear ; but less so when we talk about, for example, midnight on Sunday. Is that at the beginning or at the end of Sunday?! I should be home by midnight Saturday night. The last bus arrives just before midnight on Friday nights.

Is midday 12pm or 12am

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When I was a lad s , my teachers made it all very clear. In this article we explain the 12 hour AM PM clock format and answer questions including:. They sleep at night. American Heritage Dictionary 3rd ed. Your Email Address. Internet time from NPL. Archived from the original on 17 March But have you ever stopped to ask what is the Prime Meridian and why it is at Greenwich? As the day begins at midnight, midnight must be 12am. Similarly, noon is the meridian and is therefor neither am nor pm. What do reputable businesses, web sites and software use? The hour clock in speech often uses phrases such as

Simple right?

Which years are leap years and can you have leap seconds? In older English, it was common for the number 25 to be expressed as "five-and-twenty". When the time reaches noon, it is PM. Therefore midnight is 12 am — period. When abbreviations and phrases are omitted, one may rely on sentence context and societal norms to reduce ambiguity. Try booking some meetings, lunches etc at Instead of meaning , the "half five" expression is sometimes used to mean , or "half-way to five", especially for regions such as the American Midwest and other areas that have been particularly influenced by German culture. When is AM Tuesday? Chronology History. Sign in Register.