Why is it that Americans refer to 24 hour time as military time? I understand that the military uses the 24hr format but I don’t understand why the general public would refer to it like that?
It makes it seem like it’s a foreign concept where as in a lot of countries it’s the norm.
Army here, we always say 0000 for midnight, but honestly that’s probably just because it’s what our phones and watches call it. Perhaps it was different before electronic timekeeping was the norm.
That’s interesting. Marine here and once when I was deployed and writing up “significant event” reports for briefs, the Watch Officer never wanted to say 0000. He thought it would be too confusing when looking back and trying to figure which day it actually was. Is 0000 on 20231023 Monday at midnight or Sunday at midnight? He had us use either 2359 or 0001 and the date to clarify. 0000 didn’t exist for him, but it might have just been his own personal pet peeve.
It’s pretty commonly done with 12hr time too, for the same reason: to help protect against stupidity.
00:00 is the time with the new (“tomorrow”) date, 24:00 is the time with the old (“yesterday”) date.
24:00 isnt really used, in my experience. Also, many people dont mentally switch dates until they went to bed.
Watch officers HATE this one ambiguous millitary time/dating convention
That’s interesting. How do they say it out loud? If 6am / 6:00 / 0600 is said “oh six hundred”, is 0000 “oh oh hundred”? “oh zero hundred”? “zero thousand”? “quadruple oh”?
Oh-zero-hundred or zero-hundred if we gotta. Generally… Midnight lol
oh oh oh oh
zero zero zero zero
oh zero hundred
midnight
twelve
what a trip
Zero-Dark-Thirty