Accepted style: time of the day

HareBrain said:
Maximum number of bongs.
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With your meaning, the film High Noon would have lost all it's drama and urgency (and it's unlikely a single shot would have been fired).

I've been known to use the 24-hour clock, which has an advantage that no-one has mentioned: it's logical in a way that the more usual way of telling the time is not. The first 60 minutes of the calandar day have, using the 12-hour clock, been put into the illogically named hour that start at 12AM. How can the first hour also be the twelfth? It's utter madness.

And yes, I know it's hard to imagine a clock striking zero -- though there'd be no danger of anyone being awoken at midnight by such a strike (a benefit that should have been thought about, and built in, right from the beginning) -- but there's no need to continue with that major deficiency of clockwork clocks.

As regards 12PM: at least the first hour of the afternoon is also the twelfth hour of the day, so the situation is not quite so dire.
 
tegeus-Cromis said:
Because the sun is at its highest point in the sky? Or was that a rhetorical question?
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It isn't at its highest where I live: noon arrives 8 minutes early... and for part of the year (in daylight saving) noon arrives 68 minutes early.

For most people, the sun isn't at its highest at 12 noon, as most people do not live on the relevant line of longitude for their time zone.
 
I tend to use numbers for 'military' contexts words for 'civilian'. Though something like waking up and checking a hotel room clock might also get the numerical.
But I generally prefer words for the reason @Steve Harrison gave above.
 
Ursa major said:
It isn't at its highest where I live: noon arrives 8 minutes early... and for part of the year (in daylight saving) noon arrives 68 minutes early.

For most people, the sun isn't at its highest at 12 noon, as most people do not live on the relevant line of longitude for their time zone.
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You can't blame the sun for that. There once was a time when it did make sense.
The sun existed looooooong before humankind found it necessary to divide Earth into 24 time-zones, to use geographically boundaries in stead of longitudes when establishing the zones and, additionally, invented Daylight Saving Time.
Trust humankind to make it unnecessarily complicated!

It is best to revert to using the sundial when using phrases as 'high noon.'
 
Ursa major said:
It isn't at its highest where I live: noon arrives 8 minutes early... and for part of the year (in daylight saving) noon arrives 68 minutes early.

For most people, the sun isn't at its highest at 12 noon, as most people do not live on the relevant line of longitude for their time zone.
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~Which brings us to the question, how do you use the time in fantasy that doesn't have clocks at all...?
 
Sundials or by the use of vague phrases as 'by the sixth hour'. People weren't interested in (and had no notion of) punctually at 4:51pm, please!
 
Ursa major said:
It isn't at its highest where I live: noon arrives 8 minutes early... and for part of the year (in daylight saving) noon arrives 68 minutes early.

For most people, the sun isn't at its highest at 12 noon, as most people do not live on the relevant line of longitude for their time zone.
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That's some champion nitpicking, right there.
 
You have realised that this site is an outpost of Nitpickers United, haven't you...? (Some nitpickers -- okay, almost every single one of them (and almost all of those who are married) -- have pointed out that "United" is inappropriate, given the constant to-and-fro bickering about, for example, what is correctly precise and what is precisely correct. :))

I missed the most obvious piece of nitpicking (which may or may not have been covered in the video .matthew posted): noon is named after the Roman ninth hour, i.e. three hours after the time we call noon.
 
You can tell time, but you have to be careful what you tell it.
 
Ursa major said:
You have realised that this site is an outpost of Nitpickers United, haven't you...? (Some nitpickers -- okay, almost every single one of them (and almost all of those who are married) -- have pointed out that "United" is inappropriate, given the constant to-and-fro bickering about, for example, what is correctly precise and what is precisely correct. :))
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Or, you could try to go with the better angels of your nature...
 
Ursa major said:
As regards 12PM: at least the first hour of the afternoon is also the twelfth hour of the day, so the situation is not quite so dire.
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When time is measured, I should have added, starting with hour zero (i.e. the sensible way we -- well, lots of us -- number the floors in buildings ;):)).
 
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