On 2019-09-12 at 12:03, David Wright wrote: > On Thu 12 Sep 2019 at 09:42:03 (-0400), The Wanderer wrote: > >> On 2019-09-12 at 06:30, Dan Ritter wrote: >>> There is only one sensible interpretation: >>> >>> If 11:59 AM is two minutes before 12:01 PM, then 12:00 is PM. >>> >>> If 11:59 PM is two minutes before 12:01 AM, then 12:00 is AM. >> >> I take a slightly different approach, based on the apparent actual >> meanings of the words for which "AM" and "PM are abbreviations. >> >> It seems intuitively obvious to me that between 11:59 Ante-Meridiem and >> 12:01 Post-Meridiem must lie 12:00 Meridiem. (Though 12:00:01 - one >> second later - would be Post-Meridiem again.) >> >> Similarly, though less an "obvious necessity" consequence, between 11:59 >> Post-Meridiem and 12:01 Ante-Meridiem lies 12:00 Midnight. (I understand >> "meridiem" to be derived from a word which would have literally meant >> "mid-day".) > > Meridies (nominative case in Latin). > >> Both are intuitively represented as "12:00 M" - with no "A" or "P" - and >> that, in its turn, is ambiguous. > > It might be ambiguous if m were also an abbreviation for midnight, > which I've never come across. Neither have I, but I also haven't come across any *other* abbreviation for it which might be used in this type of context (have you?), and "M" is just as intuitive a choice for abbreviating "midnight" as it is for abbreviating "meridiem". One could argue "M" for "midnight" and "N" for "noon", but then you lose the intuitiveness of M for meridiem, and people would mishear the two as each other in nonline conversation all the time anyway. >> That being part of why I stick with 24-hour time whenever possible. > > When I read emails, I only see the Date: line from the header, and > the timedates used in the quotation lines. One thing I find odd is > mixing AM/PM with hours containing a leading zero. I was always > taught that 7 p.m. or 7pm was not written as 07, but I see that a > lot here. Contrast > > $ TZ=Europe/Paris date +'%I.%M %p' > 06.01 PM > $ TZ=Europe/Paris date +'%l.%M %p' > 6.01 PM > $ That's probably to ease parsing by automated tools, such as sort, so that they don't have to worry about handling field width. -- The Wanderer The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
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