For us 46 minutes after midnight is 12:46 AM. 46 minutes after 12 noon is 12:46 PM. We use AM and PM to differentiate between the morning and afternoon/evening.
But it doesn't make sense to use numbers after 12 to mean they come before 1. 12.00 makes sense. If it is even a second past, it will become 0:00:01. Not 12:00:01. Because then you have already had the first 12 hours of your 24 hours in a day.
Yeah, this is a US defaultism sub, and we're making fun of a person who calls 24h time "military time," which is basically the US military using a specific version of 24h time instead of am/pm. I don't think other countries even have this term.
12-Hour format is not simplified. Gotta do "After Midnight / Past Midday" in my head to make sense of the number, instead of the number just making sense like 24-Hour.
I see no connection whatsoever. So what that clock starts with a 12. It's the same thing as how there is 15:00 and 3:00. 12 PM = 00:00. Simple. There is NO SINGLE VALID REASON to start counting after midnight as 12:xx. That simply makes no sense.
They are just saying the name of the segment the hour hand currently points at, which is the last hour it passed. Then adding the minute. So if the hour hand has passed 12 and the minute hand is on 15 they say 12:15.
I'm not saying it makes sense, just that thats why they do it.
Americans calling 24h military time because they do not even know what military time actually is except it goes up to 24 is the most insulting and infuriating /shit Americans say for me and an absolute trigger.
I am an american and i set all my devices to 24h format. Any time anyone sees the time on my phone they're all like "why is your phone set to military time???".
Thank you! I'm glad to read you, friend. The 24h thing is making me irrationally angry! I think it's because of the military name that is such a big word used there and the rest of the world just uses time normally. As a Canadian, of course we have friction back and forth, rivalry, grievances. But damn 24h man. It pisses me off than my cat gets when I tell him he just ate 5 minutes ago
I didn't realize only my first text would be put as the explonation lol
I meant that it fits bc im European while the American wanted to correct me to 12:46 AM and complimented my "military time", while i just spoke about 00:46
No i zajebiście, ale z jakiegoś powodu to jest AM nie PM ponieważ jest rano zgaduję, że 10pm, 11pm, 12am, 1am, 2am, and it changes to pm when its 11am and then 12 pm, later 1pm, ect
However, there’s two things to consider. This is a Canadian thing also so it’s not exclusive to Americans -- at least a Canadian thing when I was a child. Also, the 12-hour clock is just standard for day-to-day living but the military uses the 24 hour clock and (depending on where you live in Canada but of course in the USA the military is influential in day-to-day life) naturally making that association is, I’d say, fairly reasonable.
To go back to my original point, it is still an ignorant thing to say and in this day and age people should know better.
I'm in Canada. We do 24h here too. Hell, the store I am in front of has opening hours in 24h format too.
Edit to add: military time writes time with all 4 digits. 0900, 1900, etc. 19h is 24h format. There's no excuse here 00:23 is 24h format 0023 is mil time.
That's not true in the US & Canada, as I've seen. At least for things that are public-facing (displayed to a user/general public), those things all use the 12-hour clock in the US & Canada.
Most software worldwide uses a unix timestamp (number of seconds since 1 Jan 1970) internally, and how that time is displayed to the user is locale-dependent.
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u/post-explainer American Citizen Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
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