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Subject:Re: Midnight, noon, etc. From:Valerie Jachimowicz <VJACHIMO -at- OMICRON-USA -dot- COM> Date:Wed, 14 Aug 1996 10:37:32 -0400
One of my college writing professors quizzed us on this one time, and
every one of us got it wrong, according to him. He said that 12 noon
and 12 midnight are neither AM or PM, because (I think this was the
reason) they are the point of change from one to the other. 12 noon and
12 midnight were the correct terms, and this has always made sense to
me. But I guess that 12:00:01 in the morning would be AM, because at
that point you have crossed from PM to AM.
Based on all the discussion about this topic, it would seem that using
AM or PM might leave a question in a reader's mind about which was
intended. So maybe for that reason alone it's best to use noon and
midnight-hard to make a mistake about those!
Valerie
----------
From: Eric Haddock[SMTP:eric -at- ENGAGENET -dot- COM]
Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 1996 10:10 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list TECHWR-L
Subject: Re: Midnight, noon, etc.
Midnight is the first minute of a new day--it's morning--so it
should be a.m.
Noon is the apex of the sun and every minute after that is another
minute
toward the end of the day, so it should be p.m.
So, in my thinking you could never go wrong with 12 p.m. being
noon--because that's what it is, p.m., and 12 a.m. being midnight. 1
a.m. is
in the morning--no one gets confused over that. 1 p.m. is in the
afternoon.
My electronics all use 12 p.m. as noon and 12 a.m. as midnight.
Watches,
VCRs, computers, and whatnot are all behind me. :)
12 M has got to be the most unusual notation I've ever heard of. I
wouldn't know what to think if I actually saw it. Glad I haven't!
"Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words."
-- Mark Twain
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