Hacker News Reader

Comment by tluyben2 | Hacker News Reader

My pet peeve is am/pm time; I have no clue why people use it vs 24 hour clocks. Even worse when people leave off the am/pm; 'the meeting is today at 2!'.

View on HN

I use am/pm because that's how I was taught to tell time growing up, and in my corner of the world (northeast US) nearly everyone uses it. "2 pm" is immediately meaningful to me, but to parse "14:00" I have to subtract 12 in my head. Even when the am/pm is left off, it's usually clear from context.

I'm not arguing for the inherent superiority of am/pm notation, but I do get frustrated with people who use 24-hour time because "it's more logical", without seeming to realize that it's more difficult for the majority of people to understand.

> majority of people to understand.

Depends where / with who you work? Most of my colleagues have to think the same way about am / pm and often get it wrong when it's 12:00 am/pm.

The 'it's more logical' for me does apply there; in the 24:00 you cannot get 12:00 or 00:00 wrong no matter how you think about it. It feels intuitive in every way.

12 hour clocks made sense when clocks had 12 hours on them; then you had to somehow indicate which block of 12 hours; that problem was fixed before I (and probably you) were born though.

I grew up with 24-hour clocks, and I always get confused by the 12h version of midday and midnight.

Literally, the mnemonic I use to remember which is which is "it's the one that doesn't make sense".

So 11am then 12pm

And 11pm then 12am

(Whereas I would expect the 12th hour of the morning to follow the 11th of the morning, but it's actually the other way around)

This is exactly the same defence people have about the imperial system. (I'm british so have the 'benefit' of having both systems existing in my head as a weird mish-mash).

I can take it as a "con" against any new system, but it doesn't outweigh all other benefits- if it did then there'd be no progression in society -ever-

You don't subtract it though. Once you are used to it your brain just correlates 14 with 2 and 17 with 5 and 23 with 11 without thinking. In Norway, and I think in most of the 24-hour world, we still use the 12hr clock in speech. I don't go around saying that "the clock is quarter past fifteen", I say "quarter past three" and the context usually makes it clear when I'm talking about.

Indeed. It is written 15:15, but pronounced three-fifteen (or quarter past three etc.).

Same in Germany

do people actually say "fourteen oh-oh"?

I've used 24 hour clocks all my life and everyone uses 1-12 when talking. If someone is coming to see you at 14:00 they will say: "see you at two". We only use the proper format when writing.

I wouldn't say "fourteen oh-oh", but "fourteen hundred", and I've rarely heard just "fourteen".

Extends obviously to "fourteen thirty".

(Northern England)

Interesting, I thought that -hundred or even -oh-oh was an American thing, originating in their military. (Non-native speaker from the continent.)

No, in speech/direct chat you would say 2 indeed, but not when it can be confusing. When there is any doubt, even on the phone when making an appointment I always repeat the time in 24 hour format if the appointment is more than 12 hours away. Just to make sure.

If that's what irks you, you've never had to schedule a meeting with someone who thinks their timezone is GMT when it's actually BST.

Yeah, another pet peeve is not using UTC for everything everywhere in business situations. I have i3wm running with my local time + UTC time in the bottom, so I mail people with 'the meeting is 14:00 UTC'.

Yes! Or people in another timezone telling you "the meeting is at noon today". Just goddamn tell me "it's in three hours from now", or at least give me UTC, why do you have to make me convert from your timezone? But no, if I tell people "the meeting is at 7pm EEST", I'm being difficult.

You expect the meeting to be held in the middle of the night? 'The meeting is today at 2!' is unambiguous in most cases (certainly with a 9-to-5 job).

In many locales where the 24 hour clock is used, people refer to the hours after noon as one, two, three o'clock etc. Then when you write it down somewhere two o'clock becomes 14:00.

OP's pet peeve is kind of weird though. Even with a 24 hour clock writing 9:00 for 'nine in the morning' without the leading zero is quite common, if not prevalent.

If this is work related surly there would be no ambiguity when reading 2 as 2pm or 1400.

Maybe depends on the industry?

There is; I work with teams / partners in the US/EU/AU. Ofcourse I can just check the person who writes it and jump to their time frame, but why not just say 14:00 and preferably a timezone.

The people I work with add city names after times when they're speaking to people in mixed geographies.

They say "today at noon, Chicago time." Or "9am Los Angeles."

It's become so habitual that they'll even use a city name without thinking if they need to. For example, saying "4pm Biloxi time" to someone in Chicago, which is the same time. But at least it eliminates any ambiguity.

It would there :) Anywhere outside the US, it would make no sense at all. I watched enough tv series to know this type of thing, but people who do not would have no clue what you are talking about... But yes, depending on your audience, do what works ofcourse.

Because we learned to tell time on 12-hour analog clocks?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com