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Could anyone, please, explain to me why 12:00 the noon is 12PM? Why PM? I come from Europe so it may be not so obvious to me. My reasoning is, assuming 12h cloc
by wst_ 10y ago
Could anyone, please, explain to me why 12:00 the noon is 12PM? Why PM? I come from Europe so it may be not so obvious to me. My reasoning is, assuming 12h clock, we have 12:00 twice a day. Once in the morning and once at night. So it would be only natural to say 12PM at midnight, not at noon. Since we already are dividing day for two halves, why not use exactly the same division for AM/PM? And yet, in the morning we (or actually you guys) are saying 11AM but 12PM.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- detaro 10y agoI think the best explanation is that AM means "before noon" and PM means "after noon" (ante meridiem/post meridiem), and it works better this way for all minutes after the hour: 12:01 PM is after noon, 12:01 AM is before noon (of the day it occurs on). Exactly noon and exactly midnight then are edge cases that don't make much sense, but they probably would be either way. Language probably used noon/midnight for a long time, only in newer times people started to write numbers for those as well.
- atomicUpdate 10y agoThe AM/PM lines are drawn at midnight and noon exactly. So from 00:00 to 11:59 it's AM, then from 12:00 to 23:59 it's PM. With your logic, The AM/PM lines would be drawn at 01:00 and 13:00. I think most people would find that counterintuitive, since each day draws the line at 00:00, but it would still be PM for another hour after that.