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I'm still puzzled by the comment that, in the US, midnight is
12 AM and noon is 12 PM (which I know to be true), but in
"the rest of the world" it's the
other way around.
Which countries refer to midnight as 12 PM instead of 12
AM
and noon as 12 AM instead of 12 PM?
Stephen
----- Original Message -----
Sent: July 25, 2001 22:42
Subject: [USMA:14619] Re: Metric
Marketing
In a message dated
2001-07-25 08:15:35 Eastern Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
If you want to get technical...
what does p.m. mean? post
meridian. And as meridian is noon, 12 post
meridian or after noon would
be midnight, or 24 hours.
On the other hand 12 a.m. (ante meridian)
would be 12 hours before noon, or
midnight, 0 hours. So I guess that it
boils down to whether you want the
midnight at the beginning of the day
or the midnight at the end of the day.
Even the Chicago Manual of Style
says to use 12 m. (12 meridian) or 12 noon
for noon.
If one is forced to stick with the 12-hour clock, then 12 am is
midnight and
12 pm is noon. Reason --
12 00 am is followed
by 12 01 am;
12 00 pm is followed by 12 01 pm.
Just as 0000 is
followed by 0001, and 1200 by 1201.
In a pure sense, there can't be a
2400 because there is no 2401.
In a few cases some people take 0000 to
mean midnight at the beginning of the
day and 2400 to mean midnight at the
end of the day. But you have to have a
defined point when one day
ends and another begins, and the most logical one
is
23 59 59 to 00 00
00.
Carleton
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