Thu 10 Jan 2008
Is 12noon, 12am or 12pm? GMTV don’t seem to know…
Posted by Craig under Media with the tags GMTV • midnight • noon • timeGiven the number of e-mails and text messages read out by the presenters on GMTV in the morning, I assumed that their viewers were a critical bunch always ready, eager and poised to write in for any reason at all.
But on today’s showing perhaps not.
During the weather forecast at 7.30am, a graphic was displayed to indicate that a certain area of the country would be affected by high winds - that area was highlighted in red and had “12am” written on it. The weathergirl, Clare Nasir, then helpfully said the winds should die down around about lunchtime.
12am - lunchtime? Not when I was at school it wasn’t - 12am was midnight, 12pm was lunchtime.
Now, even if the viewers didn’t spot that mistake or feel it worth a mention, shouldn’t a director or some other member of the production crew have pointed it out?
It would appear not as the same graphic (and script) was used during the 8am forecast so do they in fact think this is right? And if so, are they? Personally I don’t think so, but from Wikipedia it would appear that there is a lot of confusion about this subject…
January 10th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
I have always gone by 12am/Midnight, 12pm/Midday.
Of course, we could just adopt the 24 hour clock and that would put an end to this debate once and for all.
Perhaps a better question would be; Does Midday and Midnight actually exist as a timeframe? Does it actually occur, or do we simply move from morning to afternoon, or night to morning?
January 10th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Ollie »
Apparently 12am and 12pm are anomolies that don’t mean anything - pm would officially start with 12.01pm as it basically means after 12, so 12 after 12 doesn’t really make sense.
I prefer to say “12 noon” or “12 midnight” anyway to remove ambiguity!
January 10th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
I am with Craig - I usually say ‘noon’ or ‘midnight’ rather than 12pm or 12am. Although I agree that 12pm comes at lunchtime and 12am is midnight.
I did once see someone from continental Europe complaining about it though. He thought it made no sense for the am / pm switch to happen at 12 rather than 1. I guess in these circumstances you really have to think of 12 as 0, but “zero o’clock” doesn’t have a good ring to it!
January 13th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
But but but…
Noon is the Meridian. having anything after the 12 makes no sense!
February 4th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
There is no confusion nor ambiguity about 12am and 12pm. Since the Civil Day begins at midnight, midnight must be 12am - it could not possibly be pm of a day to which it does not belong. Since there is no noon moment between measures of time (hours, minutes, seconds) 12 midday must be 12pm. The end of the day in am/pm format must be 11.59pm since one minute later is the next day - I cannot understand why there is so much self-made confusion on such a straightforward matter.
February 4th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
graham james mayer »
I didn’t think there was any cause for confusion either until I looked into this a bit more - people seem to create problems for problems sake though, when commonsense should prevail!
February 4th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Further to my previous comment, the people who state that 12 noon is neither before nor after itself are making an irrelevant comment since times printed in numerical form, whether on the am/pm system or the 24 hour system refer to measures of time in standard time measures (hours, minutes, seconds etc) not isolated moment of time in their own right - the moment of noon is in the first second, minute and hour of the afternoon not in any measurement of the morning - similarly the moment of midnight is the first moment of the day not the last. Everything is so clear so why imagine an a non-existent ambiguity and confusion?
February 7th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Regarding Craig’s statement on January 10 - as far as I am aware, the mean time act states that civil time should be measured from midnight as the Civil Day begins at midnight (the astronomical and nautical days begins at noon), therefore the moment of noon is IN the first second, minute and hour of the afternoon. If this noon moment were cut off from the first measure of the afternoon, the first second, minute and hour of the afternoon would be a moment short. So, speaking in measure language (not moment language) 12pm means 12 o’ clock IN THE FIRST SECOND, MINUTE AND HOUR of the AFTERNOON - although noon viewed as a moment of time in its own right is neither before nor after itself, it is connected to the morning and not the afternoon in measure language. This point answers Steve’s incorrect comment on January 13 as time is measured in units (hours, minutes, seconds) and not isolated moments. I trust the situation is now clarified.
February 7th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Correction to my last comment - the last sentence but one should read ‘…although noon viewed as a moment of time in its own right is neither before nor after itself, it is connected to the AFTERNOON and NOT THE MORNING in measure language’ NOT THE OTHER WAY ROUND. This was a printing error on my part. Sorry!
May 3rd, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Regarding Craig’s comment…’according to Wikipaedia, there is a lot of confusion about this’ - I comment Wikipaedia creates self-made confusion by talking such a lot of rubbish on this subject - on turning up the Wikipaedia article on the internet, tap ‘discussions’ on the top of the article and there appears a wonderfully critical and excellent article by Alan Feldman showing the inaccuracy of Wikipaedia on this subject.