----- Original Message ----- From: Bill Potts To: U.S. Metric Association Sent: July 26, 2001 17:28 Subject: [USMA:14642] Re: Metric Marketing > Stephen: > > I have also held, for years, that if time is to be expressed in > am and pm terms (as is almost inevitable with traditional > analog watches and clocks), that midday should be expressed > as 12:00 noon and midnight as 12:00 mid. > However, if, for mechanical reasons, "noon" and "mid" are not > possible, I have further held that noon should be 12:00 am and > midnight should be 12:00 pm. As you or someone else mentioned, > pm stands for "post meridiem" (not post meridian, by the way). > Midnight is, quite obviously twelve hours after the meridian, > so the use of 12:00 am is nonsensical. But it can also be said that midnight is also twelve hours before the meridian, and it's on the same day as the meridien that it happens to be before (no arguments on whether or not the day starts at 00.00 or 00.01, please). It would be just as valid to refer to midnight as 12 AM. As a side note, I ask my mother and aunt, who both lived in Britain from the late 1930s until 1960, and they both say that they were taught the midnight was 12 AM and noon was 12 PM. Stephen Gallagher
