As you can see with a 24-hour clock, there’s no reason to use the AM/PM designation, the time is simply the time. The addition method works, as does subtraction if you’re given the military time and you want to find the “civilian” time. The hours deal is stuck onto the back end when the time is spoken and in my opinion just helps to reinforce that 1600 is a time value and not the number 1,600. Meaning that by adding 12 to 1, you get 13. As you can see, the “1” is both “1” and “13”. With 24-hour clocks, the “p.m.” hours are typically marked as a sub-number like the clock photo above. The way I learned though, was through basic arithmetic.Ī typical clock has 12 hours, with demarcations for hourly increments. If I’m told 1500, I just know that’s 3 p.m., no conversion necessary. My method for telling military time is actually the older method I used, I’ve been using it for so long that I just know what the hour is when I hear it. When I finally got into the Navy, it wasn’t something I had to get used to, as my watch had been set to it for years. I was fortunate to have taught myself military time from a young age and remember just wanting to learn it because that’s how the military did things and I’d wanted to join from a young age. or 6 p.m.! Telling Military Timeįor starters, I’d like to mention that most European countries don’t refer to a 24-hour clock as military time, it’s just “the time.” Here in the United States the standard is a 12-hour clock, so it’s effectively been called military time due it being a standard there.

It can certainly mean a big difference when you’re talking about calling someone at 6 a.m. Not only do you potentially have to often contend with different time zones, but there’s that pesky AM/PM business that can often be left off in conversation or emails. What I mean by that is that there can be a lot of confusion with time. Not only will it save you a lot of headaches when you set your phone alarm when half asleep, but the sooner the rest of society converts over, the sooner we can all stop screwing up time. While we’re discussing military time and getting into its intricacies, I’d also like to make the case today for converting your watch, smartphone and any other device capable, over to military time. Once practiced, just like anything, it becomes second nature and the mental conversion in your head becomes easier. When entered as the starting time for a shifts, '00:00' indicates that a shift starts at midnight at the beginning of the schedule day, while '24:00' indicates that a shift that starts at midnight at the end of the schedule day.Military time, or a 24-hour clock can take some getting used to, but is no harder to learn that a 12-hour clock. Note: The 24 hour Time Format variation on the normal 24 hour time. Here are all the hourly times in AM/PM and 24-hour format: All you need to do is add 12 to any time in the PM to get 24-hour format time. So 1 PM in 24-hour format is 13:00, 2 PM is 14:00, and so on. 24-hour time format is similar regular AM/PM time, except that you keep counting up after you get past 12 PM (noon). Many places in the world use the 24-hour time format. Open topic with navigation 24-Hour Time Format

Army time clock