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12 Midnight A.M. or 12 Midnight P.M.?

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::darkshadows::

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May 30, 2009, 3:13:53 AM5/30/09
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Which is correct:
12 Midnight A.M. or 12 Midnight P.M.?

Neither!

Twelve midnight A.M. and twelve midnight P.M., or 00:00 A.M. and 00:00
P.M., mean nothing at all. They are simply the midpoints that divide
the day into two equal halves.

Each and every day begins exactly at midnight, and each A.M. begins
precisely thereafter. Similarly, each P.M. begins immediately after
noon. No meaning can be assigned to 12:00 A.M. (00:00 A.M.), or to
12:00 P.M. (00:00 P.M.). They are merely reference points meant to
simplify timetables for us.

Along the same line, the Universal Day, established by the
International Convention in 1884 in Washington, D.C., U.S.A., operates
according to World Time, or Universal Time at Greenwich, England. The
logic regarding Midnight and Noon also applies to Greenwich Mean Time,
commonly referred to as GMT or Zulu time; Midnight and Noon represent
markers, or "page breaks" in the day and in the night, and may be
represented by 00:00 o�clock.

Greenwich, England also holds the distinction of being at the point of
zero longitude, where East meets West. The 1884 international
agreement also recognized this line of zero degrees longitude as the
prime meridian, a point from which all points on the earth�s surface
are measured.

Laurence Taylor

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May 30, 2009, 9:19:20 AM5/30/09
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::darkshadows:: wrote:

> Twelve midnight A.M. and twelve midnight P.M., or 00:00 A.M. and 00:00
> P.M., mean nothing at all. They are simply the midpoints that divide
> the day into two equal halves.
>
> Each and every day begins exactly at midnight, and each A.M. begins
> precisely thereafter. Similarly, each P.M. begins immediately after
> noon. No meaning can be assigned to 12:00 A.M. (00:00 A.M.), or to
> 12:00 P.M. (00:00 P.M.). They are merely reference points meant to
> simplify timetables for us.

You will, in fact, rarely see midnight (00.00 or 24.00) in a
timetable, because they can be ambiguous - that time being replaced by
23.59 or 00.01 as appropriate.

And, of course, expressions like "midnight on Thursday" should be
avoided like the plague.

--
rgds
LAurence
...All you can eat, shrimp
---*TagZilla 0.059* http://tagzilla.mozdev.org

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