Why Does the Day Have 24 Hours? Although the precise moment of noon falls in neither category, the hour succeeding it, from 12:00:01 to 12:59:59, is clearly after noon | However, most digital clocks and most sources, including timeanddate |
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One way to overcome this problem is to sacrifice accuracy for clarity | Midnight Confusion Another source of confusion is the lack of a date designator in the 12-hour system, making it impossible to logically identify a correct moment in time when only a date and 12:00 am midnight is provided |
Ante meridiem is commonly denoted as AM, am, a.
com, designate midnight as 12 am and noon as 12 pm | To avoid any confusion when referring to the precise moment of noon or midnight, we recommend using the designations 12 noon and 12 midnight instead |
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Like many other sources, timeanddate | To convert am or pm time to the 24-hour format, use these rules:• Alternatively, the 24-hour format could be used |
The main weakness of the 12-hour system is a widespread confusion about which abbreviation should be used for noon and midnight: neither moment can logically be identified as before noon am or after noon pm.
8Here, 0:00 refers to midnight at the beginning of the day while 24:00 is midnight at the end of the day | For example, at 23:00, 23 hours have passed since the beginning of the current day |
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From 1 am to noon, do nothing | 12-hour clock at noon: 12 am or 12 pm? Would you go there at midnight between April 12 and April 13? From 1:00 pm to midnight, add 12 hours |
com uses am and pm, but the other variants are equally correct and widely used.