12am....

[john1066]

Many times have I heard or read of the time 12am mentioned. I have always believed that that time doesn't exist and that it should Noon or Midnight. 12am could be either of those. 12am was mentioned in my local paper today. Please tell me i'm right! Jay..x

[john1066]

I missed a ' be' out ..sorry..

[Old_Geezer]

No I don't think you are. All times are instantaneous anyway so in a sense don't exist ;-)

I believe 12 am is synonymous with midnight.

[lankeela]

I know its not right but I always think 12am should be noon as after 11pm you would get 12 pm and after 11am should be 12 am.

[Old_Geezer]

Ah, if only life were that logical.

[rsvp]

best try not to use those two precise minutes then! have say, 11.59am go for little walkabout then it will be 12.01pm which is fine.

[mike11111]

You are right John 1066. The correct expressions are 12 noon or 12 midnight. The only room for variation is with the 24 hour clock, whereby 12 midnight may be depicted as 2400 or 0000.

[237SJ]

Saying 1200 hours solves the problem. If I read 12am I do tend to think of midday though.

[Buenchico]

As you've suggested, John, '12am' should technically be '12 midnight'

However using '12am' for midnight is the logical extension of the (perfectly sensible) convention which results in 12pm being used to indicate noon.

Noon is (by definition) neither 'ante meridiem', nor 'post meridiem'. If anything, it should be '12m'. ('12 meridiem'). But it seems more convenient to choose either 'am' or 'pm' to be used at noon. Since 12:00:01, 12:00:02, etc (in the middle of the day) are clearly 'post meridiem' (if only by a second or two!) it makes sense to designate 12:00:00 (at noon) as also being 'pm'. Following on from that convention, 12am is then used to designate midnight.

[venator]

Spot on, Buenchico! To complete the murder of this innocent question -

My Macmillan's Latin Primer, first printed 1897, defines Meridies as Noon.

Ante meridiem - = before noon.

Post meridiem = after noon.

[mike11111]

Tut! Fancy relying on MacMillan's primer. Every good classicist knows that Kennedy's primer (circa 1860) is the only reliable one.

"March, July, October, May,
Make Ides the fifteenth, not the thirteenth day"

[queencharlotte]

Mike, I know I am being pedantic, but the times you give are tautological. Just "noon" (which cannot be, say, half past eleven) and "midnight". `S like referring to Free Gifts.....................

[venator]

Yes, Mike, Kennedy is the best, but I had a school copy, and the Macmillan was mine.

I got 90% in GCE latin, by the way, and in those days we did translation into Latin. These days, they only translate from Latin - much easier!