5 ms·
AM / PM clears up the 0900 vs 2100 ambiguity, but agreed re; American date formats.
by mikeyjk 6y ago
AM / PM clears up the 0900 vs 2100 ambiguity, but agreed re; American date formats.
- zeeZ 6y agoFor me it clears it up only 92% of the day. I couldn't tell you when 12:xx AM/PM is right now.
- Fnoord 6y agoPM means post meridiem. That's Latin, but you don't have to remember it. If you simply remember the P means 'post', and the 'M' means the exact middle of the day (12 noon) then you know 12 PM is 12.00 (after noon hence afternoon) and 12 AM is after midnight or 0.00 (the hour after previous day's 23.00 / 11 PM). Then you just need to remember morning is AM, afternoon is PM, evening is PM, and night is AM. That's it. Yeah, I find 24H system easier, but its what my native locale uses, so I am biased... (as is everyone else)
- Swizec 6y agoThis is in fact so simple to remember that street signs in San Francisco, where AM/PM is native, use 11:59am/pm or 12:01 and never 12:00 to avoid ambiguity. Street cleaning from 12:01am to 3:00am, for example.
- Fnoord 6y agoOnly thing to remember there is: .00 means new hour. Which the number before .00 denotes. Caters to lowest common denominator. I had all this explained on elementary school (which was boring and slow as fuck) during English class, and we don't even use 12H system in The Netherlands. It is quite frankly as simple to remember as a logic (tho not necessarily common) grammar rule.
- jcelerier 6y agoit's really weird tho 12AM 1AM 2AM 3AM 4AM ... 11AM 12PM 1PM 2PM ... 11PM 12AM 1AM even the way you explain it: "then you know 12 PM is 12.00 (after noon hence afternoon) " when I read "12 after noon", I understand "noon + 12 hours" which should give midnight..
- ryanianian 6y agoMnemonic: “AM” is “Always Midnight”
- HenrikB 6y agoFWIW, there's also 00:00 and 24:00 to distinguish midnight at the beginning of the day versus the end of the day.
- nicwolff 6y agoThe easy way is to remember that the hour following 12 pm is clearly in the afternoon, so 12 pm must be noon.
- matsemann 6y agoYes, I'm not trying to claim that AM/PM is ambiguous, but that me as a person not used to the system (basically everyone except US and a few other countries) have no idea which is which. :)
- lazylizard 6y agoit is. some ppl say 2359 to avoid saying 12am/pm.
- hairofadog 6y agoA native Floridian once told me that the New Year's fireworks display would be starting at “12 PM”. Confused about why they’d be shooting off fireworks in the middle of the day I said, “12 PM!?” She rolled her eyes and made air quotes with her fingers and said, “Well, AM”, as if I was being extremely pedantic. To her, AM meant morning and PM meant night. Having worked on the UI of an event-related service, I can say the error rate is much lower if you go with the ‘11:59’ workaround. In addition to the confusion about whether 12 PM is 00:00 or 12:00, there’s confusion about which calendar day 12 AM falls on. When does a Friday midnight movie start? 99.9% of people will show up at the end of Friday, but in a literal user interface you’d have to choose 12 AM Saturday. I thought of fireworks girl very frequently when I worked on that UI.
- jagged-chisel 6y agoI just use noon and midnight to reduce ambiguity 11:59pm, midnight, 12:01am 11:59am, noon, 12:01pm
- ValentineC 6y ago"Midnight" doesn't solve the second part of GP's problem: > In addition to the confusion about whether 12 PM is 00:00 or 12:00, there’s confusion about which calendar day 12 AM falls on. When does a Friday midnight movie start? 99.9% of people will show up at the end of Friday, but in a literal user interface you’d have to choose 12 AM Saturday. I use 11:59pm or "end-of-day" for most cases.