Be Excellent To Each Other

Think about it......

12pm is Noon

Haha, only open for six hours a day? That's rubbish.

Hah, excellent.

Also, they're open until 10nm on a Saturday. I've never seen opening times in nanometres.

Exactly. This is a Sainsburys superstore on the outskirts of Slough (well technically it's Maidenhead).

Well, that's fair enough then isn't it? After noon in Slough everyone's down the job centre trying to get their dole money, aren't they?

It's debatable if 12pm is noon. In reality it's neither am nor pm. Midnight has just as much right to be 12pm.

Dudley has a point, but it is the accepted fashion is that 12pm is midday.

Yet another argument for the ditching of this ghastly 'AM' and 'PM' business. The 24-hour clock makes life so much easier.

Latin's rubbish anyway. Iay an'tcay ememberray hichway ayway hetay etterslay ogay oundray.

News to me.

AM and PM are fine, as long as you define the border between the two as something distinct, namely noon and midnight. The idea of 12:00pm actually being noon is ludicrous, because it means that noon is in the afternoon.

I'm now trying to find evidence to back up my wild claims and I'm struggling. Oh, I don't know; I use the 24 hour clock anyway.

That's because the only time you know is "badger time".

If noon is the meridian, then it can neither be ante- or post-. 12:00:01, however, is clearly AFTER the noon, thus PM.

[EDIT: Oh, I see that point's been then. Never mind. I've not had an original thought in years]

I've just realised I've no idea what AM and PM mean or stand for.

TO WIKIPEDIA!

EDIT: Or just try and post this and have Kern's message pop up to provide the answer!

STOP!



Badgertime.

So do I

12pm is midday, 12am is midnight. It's not debatable at all, because that's how it has been for at least, oh, a year or two now, I should think. Well, obviously you/we can debate it as much as we like, but we're not in charge of altering even this one country's time format, never mind all the others that do the same.

Citation very much needed, especially as Sainsbury at least (the one source we have so far) clearly disagrees.

But it's pish. How can the meridian be post-meridian, and noon be in the afternoon?

We are talking in the abstract, aren't we? 'Cos noon in Oxford is about five minutes behind London, whilst Cornwall's several centuries behind. Arf.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ante_Meridiem#Confusion_at_noon_and_midnight

Is quite interesting. Turns out there isn't an accepted term.

Perhaps there isn't a generally accepted term, but every person I've ever me in my whole life (except maybe Craster, but then he's wrong about everything anyway) has taken it as 12pm being midday and 12am being midnight

Also - 24 hour clock is best, as then you can pretend you're in the military every time you tell the time. "I'll meet you by the water cooler at twelve hundred hours".

But of course that's bollocks too, as it's not twelve hundred hours into the day, it's twelve hours. So how do people here verbally communicate the 24 hour clock without being as semantically wrong as "12pm=noon"? When someone asks the time do you seriously say "it's eighteen hours and forty five minutes?"

Even worse is when people write "The meeting is at 15:00pm."

You are legally allowed to slap people who do that. Lawyer-trufax.

No youtube at work, so I'll look later.

Just realised -

12pm as midday makes sense because as soon as you get one minute past you are post meridian ("12:01pm"), so it has to be "12pm" to differentiate it from the "12" that has the "am" minutes after it ("12:01am"). Ha.

When speaking, I'll say 'Meet you at 6': the context is normally such that I mean 18:00 not 06:00. In emails, text messages, or letters, I write 'meet you at 18:00'. When I'm being an arse, I'll put '18:03' or some such.

Technically, it is only midday for an infinitesemal amount of time as 12:01:00.0000000000000000000000000 (snip - Ed) 1 is pm.

Shame, it's the Dave Allen skit on teaching his son the time

If Sainsburys permit this kind of mistake, then this kind of thing needs to happen to them:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cambridgeshire/7588118.stm

This man was so enraged he drove his car into the supermarket*.

* May not be actual reason.

Indeed. and one has to differentiate between the two twelves, and it makes sense to differentiate by whether they'll be pre or post meridian after the infinitessimal amount of time has passed.

Dave Allen's ace - I have my dad to thank for liking him.

On one of my father's long "When I was in the RAF" rambles, he said that nothing in the military happens at 12am or 12pm. It's always 12:01 or 11:59 so there is no confusion.

It's ok everyone, Chris and I have solved it.

Shall I lock the thread?

[Vote: Yes]

Surely they use "1200hrs" and "0000hrs" to prevent this confusion?

I thought they always used the more precise time references like "dawn".

Maybe we should give it a two week trial first.

This, but that rogue '1' should be a zero...

Yes, sorry. My whole theory falls apart because I'm an idiot.

It's easy to see why that's stood.

It would be very confusing to have

12:00:00 am
12:00:01 pm
12:00:02 pm

and so on.

Malc

Wake me at ohhh... 5:30.

Sainsway's are great. The one in St Albans had a suggestion box with a sign over the slot that read 'DO NOT USE'

This is what I do. When I see 18:00 written down, it enters my head as 6pm

Malc

Actually, it still makes sense the way you wrote it - it's just not quite what you meant to say!

Anyway, the sign made me laugh and then I purchased a chicken ceaser sub roll before deciding if I'd pay for it on my expenses as technically I was working.