When is 12pm 2

[columb]

There's a discussion going round the office as to when 12pm (and, for that matter, 12am) refer to. Personnally I wouldn't use such an ambiguous phrase, but, if I did, then 12pm would be the middle of the night and 12am would be lunch time. however, it would appear that I'm out of step with, for example, the BBC.

Does anyone know of any authoratitive style guides on this?

Ceci n'est pas une signature
Columb Healy

 

[LNBruno]

I sometimes enjoy a glass of 'meridian'...

< M!ke >
Your right to an opinion does not obligate me to take you seriously.
- Winston Churchill

 

[Grenage]

I agree. But 'meridian' would (sadly) be lost on many people

Well, it's a fairly old term!

"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area" - Major Mike Shearer

 

[rjoubert]

Anti-Meridian...that reminds of the movie, Johnny Dangerously. When Johnny (Michael Keaton) was being lead from his jail cell on death row, one of his friends (posing as a priest) was supposedly reading scripture while handing Johnny pieces of a gun. The pieces of the gun were in the bible he was carrying, which had been hollowed out. So this guy had to improvise on the scriptures a bit. Part of his "reading" included the following...

Anti-Meridian. Uncle Meridian. All of the little Meridians.

 

[snuv]

I did intend the m to stand for meridian. (just trying to avoid mean or there will be confusion about GMT as well)

If we made midnight 12:00m, all those people who might have thought that the m stood for midnight would promptly think it meant midday.



"If it could have gone wrong earlier and it didn't, it ultimately would have been beneficial for it to have." : Murphy's Ultimate Corollary

 

[Welshbird]

Isn't it UTC (universal coordinated time) now?

Fee

The question should be [red]Is it worth trying to do?[/red] not [blue] Can it be done?[/blue]

 

[LNBruno]

UTC? Unidentified Time Concept?

< M!ke >
Your right to an opinion does not obligate me to take you seriously.
- Winston Churchill

 

[thefourthwall]

...But 'meridian' would (sadly) be lost on many people.

Hey c'mon, everybody knows what a meridian is -- it's the grass between the lanes of a highway! ;-)

 

[Thadeus]

The funny thing Fee (from a MAI perspective) is that UTC stands for Coordinated Universal Time. I guess they didn't like CUT.

~Thadeus

 

[flapeyre]

Hey c'mon, everybody knows what a meridian is -- it's the grass between the lanes of a highway!

I know what a meridian really is.

Solum potestis prohibere ignes silvarum.

 

[Welshbird]

I still like it being called GMT. After all, it IS the time at Greenwich isn't it?

Fee

The question should be [red]Is it worth trying to do?[/red] not [blue] Can it be done?[/blue]

 

[ESquared]

Technically, you're only talking about 2 seconds out of the entire 24 hour day that are neither AM nor PM.

Several people have already touched on it, but even those two seconds are unambiguously AM or PM. The time between 0:00:00 and 0:00:01 is all on the AM half and the time between 12:00:00 and 12:00:01 is all on the PM half.

That's why I spoke in such detail about the number circle.

[COLOR=black #d0d0d0]My alarm clock causes time travel. When I hit snooze, no apparent time passes before the alarm sounds again, but the universe has in fact moved forward through time by ten minutes![/color]

 

[xwb]

<off topic>
I just use the 24 hour clock to avoid confusion but when I was working at BA, I got confused.

At British Airways, if you land at midnight, on the crewing roster, it is displayed as 2400 on the previous day. If you depart at midnight, it is 0000 on the next day. Gave us no end of problems when displaying schedules on departure and arrival times.

British Rail (or whatever it is called nowadays) did not have any trains leaving at midnight. They leave at either 2359 or 0001 even though the rest of the timetable is on the hour.

</off topic>