12 PM .com
Noon or Midnight?

Noon or Midnight? Telling Time?

Precisely. In fact, this confusion created a big hype for 12pm and made it a hot topic. This was actually discussed and debated at various forums and websites. Everyone knows 12pm... ;)

"Technically speaking," neither noon nor midnight can be a.m. or p.m.

"Technically speaking" you are correct -- noon is not post meridian -- it IS meridian. However, since 12:00:01 is post meridian (or 12:00:00.01, for that matter), it makes more sense to say that 12:00:00 is post meridian for consistency's sake (or else you would have both PM and AM in the same 12 o'clock hour). Similarly midnight could be classified as BOTH PM and AM, because it is equidistant from the meridian. But classifying it as PM would produce the same confusion (i.e., 12:00 PM followed by 12:01 AM).

I think the real confusion among those who don't bother to tell time properly, is that people would rather have 1 through 12 (in a row) all be AM, then 1 through 12 all be PM. While this is a common error, it is less confusing if you consider that the hours should really be 0:00 through 11:59, and there should be no 12 o'clock hour whatsoever.

And some folks will claim that 24-hundred hours (24:00) is the same time as zero hours (00:00). No wonder folks get confused - or frustrated - or are either very early or very late for an appointment. Ever notice what appears on your digital alarm clock if you set the time to "midnight?"

What do "YOU" think? Check out the pages in the menu to the left - find out about different parts of the day.