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I was preparing an application, where the specified deadline was today 12pm. My understanding of 12pm was 12 noon, but I found it a little odd for a deadline to be at 12 noon. So I sent the following email to the staff handling the application just to make sure if my understanding was correct (this was a reply to a previous email from her where she mentioned the deadline):

Dear B,

May I just confirm whether by 12pm you mean 12 noon?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

A

From B's reply below, it seems that she was a little annoyed:

Hi A

12pm is 12 noon.

12 midnight is 12am.

So 12 lunchtime today please, thanks.

Kind regards

B

I would like to know if there was anything wrong with my question, and how could I have asked it better.

adipro
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    This seems more like a question about social skills, not really language. – Barmar Feb 27 '15 at 23:45
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    Even Guardianistas can get hung up on this one. So you're quite within your rights to query an ambiguous usage, since it matters to you. Incidentally, I personally would assume 12pm = *midnight, so I think B* is an opinionated idiot. – FumbleFingers Feb 27 '15 at 23:46
  • BTW, the way to remember it is to consider the times when the minutes are not exactly :00. 12:15 is after noon, so it's PM. The zero minute of the hour follows the same rule as the rest of the hour. – Barmar Feb 27 '15 at 23:48
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    There's also ambiguity when you say "Deadline is Midnight on " -- does that mean the midnight at the start or end of the day? Many organizations avoid this confusion by using 11:59 PM or 12:01 AM (or they use 24-hour time). – Barmar Feb 27 '15 at 23:51
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    I don't read her answer as being annoyed, just trying to be really clear. – TessellatingHeckler Feb 27 '15 at 23:57
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    @FumbleFingers - anyone who has set a digital alarm clock for an important event should have learned from personal experience when a.m. and p.m. begin. B might well hold the same opinion of you. – anongoodnurse Feb 28 '15 at 00:09
  • @Fumble You'd be up against pretty much everything except the Japanese. All current style guides and practical applications (that I've been able to find, at least) in the English-speaking world that don't circumvent the issue entirely by using noon and midnight to clarify have 12 a.m. as midnight and 12 p.m. as noon. I've never seen anything that does it the other way around. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Feb 28 '15 at 00:19
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is about etiquette. – Ellie Kesselman Feb 28 '15 at 00:20
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    @adipro The reply doesn't read as particularly annoyed to me, either, but I do wonder why a deadline at noon strikes you as odd. There is nothing unusual about deadlines at noon—in my own personal experience, noon is probably the most common time to have a deadline. Midnight is usually only common in fully automated circumstances when it doesn't matter if anyone is at work to see the applications as they come in. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Feb 28 '15 at 00:22
  • @medica: Unlike B (and you?) I don't believe one or the other interpretation is unambiguously correct. I say B is opinionated because she assumes her own myopic & parochial perspective is somehow "better" than OP's. Which she apparently feels justifies belittling him, making her an idiot in my eyes. – FumbleFingers Feb 28 '15 at 00:43
  • @Janus: In my sphere, the mantra was midnight belongs to the new day, making things inherently complex (or nonsensical) if the timeframe is today (or any day/date, come to that :) – FumbleFingers Feb 28 '15 at 00:47
  • @FumbleFingers - "idiocy" is clearly in the eyes of the beholder, and some people possess better visual acuity than others. I do not feel she was belittling, therefore I disagree with your assessment of her (and your assessment in general.) As I said, anyone with a digital alarm clock... – anongoodnurse Feb 28 '15 at 00:48
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    All just more reasons for the remaining parts of the world that are still holding out to use 24-hour notations, where it is all crystal clear. 28 February 12:00 is at noon on the last day of (non-leapy) February; 28 February 00:00 is 12 hours before; and 28 February 24:00 is 12 hours after. Simple! – Janus Bahs Jacquet Feb 28 '15 at 00:51
  • @JanusBahsJacquet Cyrstal clear-ish. 12 hours after would be 29 February 00:00. And your format is less clear on 29 February 20:15 where it looks at a glance like a date this year. And I don't know what timezone you're in so I can't put that event into my local time. ISO standard 8601 exists to 'provide an unambiguous and well-defined method of representing dates and times, so as to avoid misinterpretation of numeric representations of dates and times'. The event might then be 2015-02-28T00:00Z or 2015-02-28T23:59+01:00 -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 – TessellatingHeckler Feb 28 '15 at 04:41
  • @TessellatingHeckler 28 Feb 24:00 and 29 Feb 00:00 is the same moment in time. Obviously ISO-8601 is even more unambiguous, but it's also less readable. I'm not sure how 29 Feb 20:15 is less clear than 29 Feb 8:15 PM because it looks like a date this year? Nobody writes years with colons in the middle… – Janus Bahs Jacquet Feb 28 '15 at 09:08
  • @JanusBahsJacquet, I found it unusual because application deadlines I came across so far were at the end of the day, that is, midnight. That's why I wanted to make sure. – adipro Feb 28 '15 at 14:25
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    The definite answer on the 12 o'clock (is it AM or PM) dilemma http://english.stackexchange.com/a/122325/44619 – Mari-Lou A Feb 28 '15 at 14:33
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    Related: How should “midnight on…” be interpreted? – Mari-Lou A Feb 28 '15 at 14:41

2 Answers2

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B made a technical error, in both her original deadline specification and in her follow-up message to you, to imply that “12pm” has a well-defined meaning. It does not. 12:00 noon is neither ante meridiem (before noon) nor post meridiem (after noon); it is exactly noon, and it should be referred to as such (http://www.npl.co.uk/reference/faqs/is-midnight-12-am-or-12-pm-faq-time).

Likewise, 12:00 midnight is exactly midway between one noon (i.e., meridiem) and the next, so one might argue that it has equal right to be called either am or pm. Midnight is also neither an “am” nor a “pm.” You can remove all ambiguity by referring to it as midnight.

You can usually infer from context whether a speaker means 12n or 12m when she says “12pm,” which is surely why most people continue to do it. But in the case of your deadline, I’m with you: I might also have assumed that a more likely time for a deadline would be midnight.

I think that both your note and B’s response were respectful and polite. You should be glad you asked. Asking saved you and B from missing your schedules. Had her response been different (she could easily have answered in the opposite way, because of the undefined-ness of “12pm”), it might have saved you from mistakenly prioritizing your application over something more urgent.

There are some fun stories on this noon/midnight topic at http://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-1752,00.html. Search for the string “3.07” for one that I found particularly intriguing.

Cary Millsap
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  • Interesting. I never even knew there was confusion. Wouldn't take the first article too seriously though; it mentions a time called "24:00", while there clearly is no such time. – Mr Lister Feb 28 '15 at 08:30
  • @MrLister, I suppose if someone asked me to pick him up at 24:01 on the 7th and refused to answer any questions about it, then he shouldn't be surprised when I arrive at one minute past midnight on the morning of the 8th (grin). – Cary Millsap Feb 28 '15 at 18:01
  • Since it doew not exists - while discussing an appointment - "12pm" seems to me just a mistake in writing. So, confusing. – Augusto Mar 02 '18 at 06:04
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I agree with @TessellatingHeckler that B is being polite (as well as brief) in her response (she probably has a lot to do).

She says please, thanks, and Kind regards. If she had been less brief, perhaps she would not have sounded brusque to you.

Hi A.

Absolutely! For future reference, 12pm is 12 noon, and 12 midnight is 12am.

So, yes, the form is due by 12 lunchtime today, please.

Thanks, and Kind regards,

B

Imagine how many times she might have answered this question! Yet she is polite. (Had she said "sincerely", it might have been worse.) No harm done on either end.

(For future reference, imagine setting a digital alarm clock for an important event in the morning. A.M. begins at 12:00 at night, and ends with 12:00 noon - just as B pointed out.)

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anongoodnurse
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  • I would not have got the impression that she was a little annoyed if she just cared to answer my question with yes or no. Her first two lines (after greetings) seemed unnecessary to me. – adipro Feb 28 '15 at 14:29