10:15 on a Saturday night

[venta]

An important survey:

[Poll #1060840]

Yes, I know 12pm isn't a meaningful time. But people use it, so I want to know what is generally understood by it. If you want a box for "I wouldn't understand anything by it, because it's a stupid thing to say", then you can't have one; just imagine that the something happening is important and you're forced to take a guess.

Comments

[broadmeadow.livejournal.com]

This is very interesting, because I didn't realise there was any confusion. To me, noon is 12pm; midnight is 12am. I suppose that's because if 12:01 in the afternoon is "pm" then it makes sense that the entire hour is pm.

Whether it makes sense and whether it's correct are not necessarily the same, of course. It makes sense that the new century began at the start of 2000, but technically it began a year later, because the first year AD was 1 and the first century ran from 1AD to 100AD inclusive. This also bizarrely means that the last decade of the 20th century was 1991-2000, inclusive - presumably not the same thing as "the 90s".

But now you raise it, I suppose that if you regard "pm" and "afternoon" as synonymous, then noon must be am, because it is not _after_ noon. But what about this: if midnight between Saturday and Sunday is 12pm, what day is it? If you say it's still "pm" it makes sense to say it's still Saturday. But it seems totally weird if Sunday doesn't start dead-on midnight. And if Sunday does start dead-on midnight, then it's "pm" both at the start and the end, which doesn't seem right either.