![]() If Soldiers and Airmen are saying 2:00pm, they’re a little more likely to give it to you as “fourteen hundred hours,” while Marines or Coast Guardsman are a little more likely to render it just “fourteen hundred.” Across the branches though, it’s typical to drop the “hours” bit when you’re talking face-to-face and your meaning is obvious, only adding it in conversation and written communication that’s more formal and where you want to make sure the message is clear. While saying “oh” for “zero” (“Be there at ‘oh six hundred!'”) is colloquial and often seen in movies and TV, saying “zero” is a part of military communication protocol.Īs far as whether you should say “hours” after giving the time, that somewhat varies by what branch of the military you’re dealing with. And 1000 would be spoken as “ten hundred” not “one thousand.” To say a time with minutes, you simply pronounce each number. When you say the numbers, always use “hundred” instead of “thousand.” So 0600 would be spoken “zero six hundred” or “zero six hundred hours” (more on this below). Unlike standard use of the 12-hour and 24-hour clocks, you don’t place a colon between the hour and the minutes when writing military time. You’ll hear midnight referred to as 2400 or 0000. Is midnight 2400 or 0000? Midnight is sort like an ace card. So if you want to say 6:30pm in military lingo, add 1200 to 6:30 to get 1830. If you want to convert standard time to military time, add 1200 to any time from 1:00pm to 11:00pm. ![]() So for example if someone says “Meet me in room 202 at 1545,” you’d just subtract 1200 from 1545 to get 3:45pm. For a military time that’s 1300 or larger, simply subtract 1200 to get the standard time.For hours below 10, you just add a zero in front of it. The hours from 1am to noon are the same as in civilian time-keeping.How to Convert Military Time to Civilian TimeĬonverting military time to civilian time (or vice versa) is pretty easy once you get the hang of it: While the 24-hour clock is the international standard for time-telling, because of the rarity of its use in North America outside of the Armed Forces (and some areas of medical and emergency services, navigation, aviation, and computing where ambiguities in the time can be dangerous and cumbersome), it is commonly known here as “military time.” “Military time” has some differences from the standard use of the 24-hour clock, as detailed below. For these reasons, the 24-hour clock is popular around the world, and was adopted first by the US Navy in 1920, and then by the Army in 1942, during WWII. For example, you can more quickly figure out that something lasts for five hours if you know it runs from 10:30 to 15:30, rather than being told that it ran from 10:30am to 3:30pm. It’s also easier to calculate the duration of something using the 24-hour clock. It can cause confusion over whether a time given is in the am or pm, and whether 12:00 is midnight or noon. ![]() When you compare the two systems, the 12-hour clock has its disadvantages. So for example, you would say that Thursday ends at 24:00 tonight, and Friday begins at 00:00. Midnight is also sometimes rendered as 24:00 to indicate the end of the day. Midnight is 00:00 and the last minute of the day is 23:59. Under the 24-hour clock system, the hours of the day run 0-23, midnight to midnight. In North America, civilians use the 12-hour clock in which the day is divided into two sections: the 12 hours from midnight to noon ( ante meridiem - a.m.), and the 12 hours from noon to midnight ( post meridiem - p.m.). There are two main systems for telling time: the 12-hour and the 24-hour. Understanding the 12-Hour and 24-Hour Time Systems Tired of feeling like a civilian chucklehead, I decided once and for all to learn how to convert military time to standard time quickly and easily. Consequently, I would stand there in silence, furrowing my eyebrows, trying to make the conversion as quickly as I could so I didn’t look like an idiot. I knew I had to add or subtract 12 to convert military time to standard time, I just never knew which one was the correct option in that moment. It was when someone gave me a time that was in the afternoon or evening that I had trouble. I didn’t have problems with morning times - those are easy to figure out. Having not served in the Armed Forces, I was always thrown for a loop whenever someone would randomly bust out military time.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |