On Thursday, August 14, 2014 10:18:36 AM UTC-4, TomR wrote:
In ,

Percival P. Cassidy typed:

On 08/14/14 06:00 am, Ed Pawlowski wrote:



Most of us learned that in 5th grade or before. 12 AM is midnight.

12 PM is noon. There would be less confusion in the world with a 24

hour clock. We all know that 00:00 is 24:00



Then you learned wrong: the "M" in "AM" and "PM" is "meridiem" =

"midday" = "noon"; the "A" and "P" are "ante" (= "before") and "post"

(= "after"), respectively. So 12:00 (using the 12-hour clock) is

either noon or midnight,



.....and 12:00 AM is twelve hours before noon and

12:00 PM is twelve hours after noon.



But, if I use that reasoning, wouldn't 10:00 AM mean 10 hours before noon

and 11:00 AM would mean eleven hours before noon?

That's an interesting point. So 10AM is really what everyone calls 2AM.
You're right, if that's the system, more than just noon and midnight are
apparently wrong..... Oh my!

I took it more in the sense that we have a system where 12 is high noon,
11 is before it, 1 is after it, and the ante just means that we're talking
about the 11 before 12, not the 11 after it, which would be 11PM. But
if you take what he posted literally, it's as you say.

My view of the whole thing is that with the ante/post thing, 12 noon
and 12 midnight could be either or both. To avoid confusion, obviously
the world has settled on the convention that 12AM is midnight, 12PM is
noon. And it makes sense to me. As the day is progressing, it's
11AM, then noon. What would it make more logical sense to associate 12
noon with? The AM period which has just ended? Or the PM period, which
is just beginning? We're usually looking ahead, not back, so my vote
would be for noon to be 12PM. Seems like 99% of the world agrees.