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The time 8:45 may be spoken as "eight forty-five" or "(a) quarter to nine". [19] In older English, it was common for the number 25 to be expressed as "five-and-twenty". [20] In this way the time 8:35 may be phrased as "five-and-twenty to 9", [21] although this styling fell out of fashion in the later part of the 1900s and is now rarely used. [22]
Punctuation and spacing styles differ, even within English-speaking countries (6:30 p.m., 6:30 pm, 6:30 PM, 6.30pm, etc.). [ citation needed ] Most people who live in countries that use one of the clocks dominantly are still able to understand both systems without much confusion; the statements "three o'clock" and "15:00", for example, are ...
Date and time notation in the United Kingdom records the date using the day–month–year format (31 December 1999, 31/12/99 or 31/12/1999). The time can be written using either the 24-hour clock (23:59) or the 12-hour clock (11:59 p.m.), either with a colon or a full stop (11.59 p.m.).
In American English, the term military time is a synonym for the 24-hour clock. [8] In the US, the time of day is customarily given almost exclusively using the 12-hour clock notation, which counts the hours of the day as 12, 1, ..., 11 with suffixes a.m. and p.m. distinguishing the two diurnal repetitions of this sequence.
The date and time in Australia are most commonly recorded using the day–month–year format (25 February 2025) and the 12-hour clock (2:49 pm), although 24-hour time is used in some cases. For example, some public transport operators such as V/Line [1] and Transport NSW [2] use 24-hour time, although others use 12-hour time instead.
The government describes the 24-hour system as "desirable" but does not enforce its use, meaning that the 12-hour clock remains common for oral and informal usage in English-speaking contexts. [29] It is not the recommended style in journalism, for example. [30] This situation is similar to the use of the 24-hour clock in the United Kingdom.
The time of day is typically expressed in English in terms of hours. Whole hours on a 12-hour clock are expressed using the contracted phrase o'clock, from the older of the clock. [6] (10 am and 10 pm are both read as "ten o'clock".) Hours on a 24-hour clock ("military time") are expressed as "hundred" or "hundred hours".
When the time is expressed in the HH:MM:SS notation, the Roman ante/post-meridiem indicators (AM and PM) are also used frequently. In addition, they sometimes follow the convention of writing the Korean-style indicator before the time; it is not uncommon to encounter times expressed in such a way, e.g., “ AM 9:18 ” instead of “ 9:18 AM ”.