When is midnight? Nomenclature question

Ken Pizzini tz. at explicate.org
Mon Apr 24 03:41:06 UTC 2006


On Sun, Apr 23, 2006 at 12:14:36AM -0700, Paul Eggert wrote:
> I ask because there is a lot of confusion around on this subject.
> For example, <http://www.physics.nist.gov/News/Releases/questions.html>
> says that railroads and airlines get around the 12:00 ambiguity by never
> scheduling departures for either noon or midnight, but I once had a
> printed airline ticket that said I left LAX at "1200N", meaning noon.

Even worse, I've seen legislative hearings that were scheduled for
"12:00 M".  The "M" here means... no, not midnight, but meridian ---
i.e., noon!  I was quite confused about the "midnight meeting" until I
was clued in on the "correct" way of reading the notation.

		--Ken Pizzini



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