# Writing the date



## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

The symmetry and international usability (month & day being the same) of yesterday's date, when written in abbreviated form with numerals only, 1.1.11, got me thinking about the different ways the date is written not only in different parts of the world but also across time.

Because I remember as a child in London that it was not uncommon to see the abbreviated form written like this: 25 - XII - 2010, with dashes rather than obliques or full stops and with Roman numerals.

In Sweden there are several acceptable short forms for hand writing with numbers only: 2010.12.25 and 10.12.25

The machine/digital versions either use dashes or remove all spaces, thus:
101225 or 10-12-25 or sometimes, but not often, with the complete year 20101225 

Best before dates on foodstuffs in Sweden are always international: 251210

And of course the "normal" way round is used by most people when writing letters, diaries and on daily newspapers and for other everyday uses: 25.12.10 or 25/12 - 2010. 
This last Swedish one 25/12 - 2010 is quite interesting in apearance, and you only ever see it in handwriting. An almost horizontal oblique between the day and month, with the day raised above the month then a dash and the year written in slightly smaller numbers & slightly raised.

In Swedish when signing forms and papers I always use the full combined word & number form: 25.e december 2010
In English for the same purposes I use, 25th December 2010. 

When using the abbreviated form in Swedish I write 25 dec 2010 
When using the abbreviated form in English I usually use 25/12/2010 or 25th Dec 2010.

I don't like abbreviating the year. And I don't like using the reversed
numbers only Swedish form, I find it confusing to read. I also don't like omitting the numeral letters when followed by the abbreviated month: st, nd, rd, th. (Peeve: that Word doesn't recognise/accept all four of them for automatic raising!)

The US mm-dd form I'd never seen in use in the UK until the first time I noticed the BBC using it a few years ago in the text of an article, i.e. blah blah blah on April 5th was blah blah blah. 
However, a little bit of research informed me that in fact what I and many think of as the US form is in fact an antiquated form in the UK, but this only applies when talking about the month and day. Add the year and we're back to the standard 5th April 2010. 

I've got 2 questions now.
Does anyone know if any other country uses the "backwards" Swedish form, i.e. 101225?
And does anyone know if any other country uses the "mixed order" US form 12.25.10?
The US form must lead to problems for tourists in the US and US citizens when overseas when the day is lower than 12 and the month and date are close: 5/6/10 for example. 

James out!
3rd Jan 2011 :icon_smile:


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## Erablian (May 20, 2010)

The year-month-day order (all digits, no words) is in fact the international standard published by ISO (the International Organization for Standardization). I hear that it is in popular use in the Far East. This order is also the national standard of Canada, but Canadians are generally unaware of this standard and would ignore it even if they were aware of it. The traditional way of writing an all-numeric date in Canada is day-month-year, but U.S. influence has made the month-day-year order popular. When you seen an ambiguous form like "4/5/2011" written by a Canadian, you had better ask for clarification. However, when the month is written as a word, it's always month-day-year in this country.

By the way, almost all English style guides, from all English-speaking countries, recommend writing the day number without "st," "nd," "rd" or "th," even though it is always pronounced as an ordinal number.


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

Erablian said:


> The year-month-day order (all digits, no words) is in fact the international standard published by ISO (the International Organization for Standardization). .


That's extremely interesting & useful to know. I was not aware of that, and I occasionally work on a TC (technical committee) of the ISO for societal security - TC 223.

QUOTE=Erablian;1177825]By the way, almost all English style guides, from all English-speaking countries, recommend writing the day number without "st," "nd," "rd" or "th," even though it is always pronounced as an ordinal number.[/QUOTE]

hhmmm...that must be a new thing. I've been working as an editor for years & have not encountered that recommendation before. Perhaps it's time to update my library


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## JJR512 (May 18, 2010)

The US format is fine with me, i.e., 1/7/2011. This is because it matches how I say the date: "January seventh, two thousand eleven" (or "twenty eleven" for the year).

I could be mistaken but I believe the British/European backwards (from my point of view) format, i.e. 7/1/2011 is the standard for the American military.


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## MikeDT (Aug 22, 2009)

I was brought up with the UK way of writing dates, e.g. 8th January, 2011, so it's logical that I write 8.1.2011, the date of this post. Depending on where I am or what I'm doing, I also see and write the date as 2011 年 01 月 08 日.

BTW how do people write times? I write down times using the 24hour system, as I've found AM and PM to be rather clumsy, and also because most places I've worked use the 24hour system.



Erablian said:


> The year-month-day order (all digits, no words) is in fact the international standard published by ISO (the International Organization for Standardization). I hear that it is in popular use in the Far East.


Yes, this is certainly the standard order for writing dates in China, e.g. YYYY/MM/DD


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## Howard (Dec 7, 2004)

I use dots or slashes to write out the date.


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## TheGreatTwizz (Oct 27, 2010)

When writing, I always write in the manner of '8 Jan 2011'. My mother used to do this, and when I was a young boy someone advised me it was (US) military style, and stick with it this day. There is no possibility of confusion, either by a commoner or someone familiar with standards. If I were to write 1/8/2011 or 8/1/2011, it could be easily confused by the majority of the world.


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

MikeDT said:


> BTW how do people write times? I write down times using the 24hour system, as I've found AM and PM to be rather clumsy, and also because most places I've worked use the 24hour system.


I always, without excpetion use the 24 hr clock, to avoid confusion due to the fact that a surprising number of people don't know the difference between a.m and p.m or the Swedish equivalents f.m. (forenoon) and e.m (afternoon).

I recently had to point out to an info manager that the time for STARTEX given as 0000 on the info sheet was incorrect because there is no such written time as 0000. I pointed out that the exercise starts at 0001 and finishes 48 hours later at 2359.


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## Trimmer (Nov 2, 2005)

Apparently this form for today: 8 2011-1 was/is used in Turkey.


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

Trimmer said:


> Apparently this form for today: 8 2011-1 was/is used in Turkey.


Holy confusing numerals Batman!!!!


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## TheGreatTwizz (Oct 27, 2010)

Earl of Ormonde said:


> I always, without excpetion use the 24 hr clock, to avoid confusion due to the fact that a surprising number of people don't know the difference between a.m and p.m or the Swedish equivalents f.m. (forenoon) and e.m (afternoon).
> 
> I recently had to point out to an info manager that the time for STARTEX given as 0000 on the info sheet was incorrect because there is no such written time as 0000. I pointed out that the exercise starts at 0001 and finishes 48 hours later at 2359.


I routinely have to explain to colleagues and subordinates the 24 hours clock. My cell phone is on it, and even my digital watches of youth were as well. I set every car clock to it when possible as well. Personally, the issue arises for me during winter months if I end up on an odd schedule. A clock reading 6:15 could just as easily be AM as PM based on the light in the windows. Makes things MUCHHHHHH easier.


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## JJR512 (May 18, 2010)

Earl of Ormonde said:


> I always, without excpetion use the 24 hr clock, to avoid confusion due to the fact that a surprising number of people don't know the difference between a.m and p.m or the Swedish equivalents f.m. (forenoon) and e.m (afternoon).
> 
> I recently had to point out to an info manager that the time for STARTEX given as 0000 on the info sheet was incorrect because there is no such written time as 0000. I pointed out that the exercise starts at 0001 and finishes 48 hours later at 2359.


The time 0001 is two minutes after 2359 (assuming we are talking about zero point zero seconds as well). 2359 is 11:59 pm. 0001 is 12:01 am. What about 12:00 am, aka midnight? How do you write that? I would write it as 0000, but if you don't like that, the only other choice I can imagine is 2400, but that is not correct, either, as technically, midnight (12:00 am) is the beginning of the day, not the end.

Also, 2359 is not 48 hours after 0001. Assuming you meant two whole days exactly, the time 48 hours after 0001 is also 0001. In other words, 0001 on Jan. 10, 2011, will be exactly 48 hours later than 0001 on Jan. 8, 2011. If you set the later time at 2359 of Jan. 9, 2011, that would only be 47 hours and 58 minutes later than 0001 on Jan. 8, 2011.

The exact moment of midnight, the first moment of every day, is 12:00:00.0 am. In 24h format it'd be 00:00:00.0.

Note that the ISO 8601 standard mentioned earlier does actually allow for both 0000 and 2400 to be used to represent midnight. Apparently it is up to the user to decide which to use; 2400 is more to indicate the end of the day, whereas 0000, the more commonly used form, is meant to indicate the beginning of the day. But technically, as I pointed out earlier, 0000 would be more correct.


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## Howard (Dec 7, 2004)

Trimmer said:


> Apparently this form for today: 8 2011-1 was/is used in Turkey.


That looks confusing,How is anyone supposed to remember that?


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## Trimmer (Nov 2, 2005)

For the date I use 9 Jan 2011 which is pretty failsafe. I think 'th' and 'st' are a bit redundant.

For the clock I use 24 hour just like on AAAC, but I like the French 14H23


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

JJR512, the military and emergency services worlds never write 0000 it's as simple as that, but they frequently use 2359 and 0001. And there is a good reason for this, because 0000 in conjunction with a date is in fact 2 points in time 24 hours apart, but in reality that is irrelevant because it just doesn't exist in the 24 hour clock as used by professionals. 2359 and 0001 are only 1 point in each 24 hour period.
BTW - it isn't 2 minutes, 0001 is only 1 min after midnight & 2359 only 1 minute before. The 2 min gap between 2359 and 0001 is irrelevant because no one is measuring it or using it.

As for 48 hours, in the world of CIMIC exercises, the military and police everyone knows that 2359 and 0001 mean midnight. 

You can read up on many sources books & internet about this.


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

The Swedes being a belt & braces nation prefix 24 hr times with the abb Kl. (which means hours) Kl. 1525. Similarly they also prefix the year 2000 with the word year (År) År 2000...and I have absolutely no idea why. I think it might have to do with people being uncomfortable with the 20 following the 19 of the last 100 years.


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## JJR512 (May 18, 2010)

Earl of Ormonde said:


> JJR512, the military and emergency services worlds never write 0000 it's as simple as that, but they frequently use 2359 and 0001. And there is a good reason for this, because 0000 in conjunction with a date is in fact 2 points in time 24 hours apart, but in reality that is irrelevant because it just doesn't exist in the 24 hour clock as used by professionals. 2359 and 0001 are only 1 point in each 24 hour period.
> BTW - it isn't 2 minutes, 0001 is only 1 min after midnight & 2359 only 1 minute before. The 2 min gap between 2359 and 0001 is irrelevant because no one is measuring it or using it.
> 
> As for 48 hours, in the world of CIMIC exercises, the military and police everyone knows that 2359 and 0001 mean midnight.
> ...


I work in the emergency services world (well, I have in the past, and currently volunteer within it) and have never been told not to write 0000 or 2400.

0000 in conjunction with a date is not two different points in time 24 hours apart, not if the date is the same. No matter how you choose to write it, there is only one 0000, or 00:00, or 12:00 am (all three of which mean exactly the same thing: midnight) per day.

"BTW - it isn't 2 minutes, 0001 is only 1 min after midnight & 2359 only 1 minute before. The 2 min gap between 2359 and 0001 is irrelevant because no one is measuring it or using it." Wait, what? One time point (0001) is one minute after midnight, another time point (2359) is one minute before, but they aren't two minutes apart? Doesn't 1 + 1 = 2?

I mean, pick any other point in time and try that test. Pick 1437. Is 1438 one minute after? Yes. Is 1436 one minute before? Yes. Are 1438 and 1436 two minutes apart? Yes.

But then you go on to talk about the 2-minute gap, right after saying it isn't a 2-minute gap. :confused2:

Look, I'm not saying that you haven't been taught the way you're describing, I'm just saying the way you're describing you've been taught is wrong. It's even more wrong to say that nobody is measuring or using it.

Look at it this way: What does 2359 equal in 12h format? 11:59 pm. What does 0001 equal in 12h format? 12:01 am. Now here's where it gets interesting. When my 12h clock adds one minute to 11:59 pm, it says 12:00 am. One minute later, it says 12:01 am. If 12:01 am is 0001, and 11:59 pm is 2359, then what is the 24h equivalent of 12:00 am? It can't be either 2359 or 0001, because each of those already has their own equivalents (11:59 pm and 12:01 am, respectively), and I don't believe that a single point in time on one clock can be equivalent to two different points of time on another clock. Time doesn't flow any differently just because one is using a 24 hour clock. There aren't a different number of hours or minutes in a day just because one is using a 24 hour clock. Midnight is still one minute after 2359 and one minute before 0001 no matter how you write it or what kind of clock you're using.

If all you're talking about is a notational format, i.e. in your notation system midnight is simply never referred to _as if_ it doesn't exist, that's fine. But to say it doesn't actually exist, to say that nobody uses midnight or cares about it or whatever, or that nobody needs to measure an amount of time that includes midnight is just flat-out incorrect.


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## JJR512 (May 18, 2010)

And furthermore..."You can read up on many sources books & internet about this." Yes indeed. How about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24_hour_clock for starters? In addition to a brief discussion on 00:00 vs. 24:00 (echoing what I stated earlier), the article also goes into a little bit about how some English-speaking military systems discourage the use of 0000 and 2400, with the preference being to write times _near_ to midnight, such as 2359 or 0001. What this does not say is that 0000 or 2400 do not actually exist or that it's wrong to write them.

I would have thought that the military would prefer accuracy. Or the police. If something happens at midnight, it should be documented as such. If something needs to happen at midnight, then midnight should be the time it's instructed or directed to happen. What consequences would there be if something that needs to happen at midnight actually happened a minute earlier, or a minute later, because the military didn't want to write 0000 so instead wrote 2359 or 0001? I don't know...but the military has the guns and bombs and I don't really want to find out, know what I mean? I mean, suppose the President orders an attack to be launched "at midnight". So the Navy and Air Force plan out a coordinated strategy. But the Navy head orders their part of the attack to start at 2359 and the Air Force head orders their part of the attack to start at 0001. Now they're two whole minutes out of sync. Doesn't seem very irrelevant to me, but that's just my opinion, and I'm just a civilian so who cares what I think.


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

"That's true for you, but not for me", as the old folks in Ireland say.


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## Trimmer (Nov 2, 2005)

The 'missing two minutes' discussion reminded me of the way Swiss railway clocks only 'jump' to the next minute after the second hand has done a full 60 second sweep (if you follow, dear readers), rather than slowly creeping on as most clocks do. This means that Swiss trains - famed for their excellent time keeping - actually have almost a whole extra minute to be 'on time' compared with everywhere else's trains. The 1405 , for example, could still arrive or depart bang on time at 1405:59 which would appear a minute late on other clocks. It all adds up.


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## Douglas Brisbane Gray (Jun 7, 2010)

Earl of Ormonde said:


> JJR512, the military and emergency services worlds never write 0000 it's as simple as that, but they frequently use 2359 and 0001. And there is a good reason for this, because 0000 in conjunction with a date is in fact 2 points in time 24 hours apart, but in reality that is irrelevant because it just doesn't exist in the 24 hour clock as used by professionals. 2359 and 0001 are only 1 point in each 24 hour period.
> BTW - it isn't 2 minutes, 0001 is only 1 min after midnight & 2359 only 1 minute before. The 2 min gap between 2359 and 0001 is irrelevant because no one is measuring it or using it.
> 
> As for 48 hours, in the world of CIMIC exercises, the military and police everyone knows that 2359 and 0001 mean midnight.
> ...


Did you have the old story about between 2359 an 0001 in the forces was your own time and you could do what you wanted then?

On of the many traps for unwary sprogs/nigs/rooks in the Army anyway.


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## Howard (Dec 7, 2004)

For me,I use slashes to represent the date,It's easier to understand.


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

Douglas Brisbane Gray said:


> Did you have the old story about between 2359 an 0001 in the forces was your own time and you could do what you wanted then?
> 
> On of the many traps for unwary sprogs/nigs/rooks in the Army anyway.


Yes we did get that one actually, at the Regimental Depot. However, luckily I've never been on an op, patrol, exercise or anything else that has either started or finished at midnight - too much confusion involved. So at midnight I was either in a trench, shellscrape, or on/in a plane,train,tank, landrover, police vehicle or police control room so not much chance of taking that "free" time


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## JJR512 (May 18, 2010)

Trimmer said:


> The 'missing two minutes' discussion reminded me of the way Swiss railway clocks only 'jump' to the next minute after the second hand has done a full 60 second sweep (if you follow, dear readers), rather than slowly creeping on as most clocks do. This means that Swiss trains - famed for their excellent time keeping - actually have almost a whole extra minute to be 'on time' compared with everywhere else's trains. The 1405 , for example, could still arrive or depart bang on time at 1405:59 which would appear a minute late on other clocks. It all adds up.


Personally, as long as the second the train is due to arrive isn't specified, I'd accept anything within the minute as being on time. So the 1405 I would accept as being "on time" anytime from 14:05:00 to 14:05:59. If it's 14:06:00 or later, it's late, and if it's 14:04:59 or earlier, it's early.

Does the second hand on a Swiss railway clock sweep around the dial, or tick from second to second?


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## Douglas Brisbane Gray (Jun 7, 2010)

Earl of Ormonde said:


> Yes we did get that one actually, at the Regimental Depot. However, luckily I've never been on an op, patrol, exercise or anything else that has either started or finished at midnight - too much confusion involved. So at midnight I was either in a trench, shellscrape, or on/in a plane,train,tank, landrover, police vehicle or police control room so not much chance of taking that "free" time


Much the same here as far as military is concerned. We did have a techie full screw who asked the sergeant major if he could have all the ones he hadn't used in the last year to go and have a kip.


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

Douglas Brisbane Gray said:


> Much the same here as far as military is concerned. We did have a techie full screw who asked the sergeant major if he could have all the ones he hadn't used in the last year to go and have a kip.


 LOL!!! Sounds like REME!


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## Trimmer (Nov 2, 2005)

JJR512 said:


> Personally, as long as the second the train is due to arrive isn't specified, I'd accept anything within the minute as being on time. So the 1405 I would accept as being "on time" anytime from 14:05:00 to 14:05:59. If it's 14:06:00 or later, it's late, and if it's 14:04:59 or earlier, it's early.
> 
> Does the second hand on a Swiss railway clock sweep around the dial, or tick from second to second?


It sweeps from second to second, and then stops at 12 as the minute hands moves to the next minute after which it starts again. It's actually more convenient for the passenger, but it is probably also 'convenient' for calculating the average time-keeping of the trains. You can see one here.


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

Just to clarify what I meant earlier. The time 0000 actually belongs to 2 days. It is the exact end of one day & the exact start of the next, hence the confusion, hence it not being used by anyone. Each 0000 timepoint exists on 2 dates, that of the day that has finished and that of the day that is starting, and hence each date e.g. 11 Jan having two 0000 timepoints, and we're full circle, hence the fact that no one uses it. Because for example, the confusing text: "Time 0000 on 11 Jan" is 2 points in time that are 24 hours apart, one point being the exact start of 11 Jan., the other being the exact end of 11 Jan 24 hours later. Hence when it is needed and in my experience it is is rare, but it does happen, (as with the example I started with) the relevant time is either given as 2359 or 0001 - depending on which date is specified of course. 

EVERYONE knows or should know this. And again that is why it isn't used. I hope now that that is crysral clear. But like I said I thought everyone already knew this basic fact of the 24 hour clock! Which is the first & most basic fact you learn in military training about using the 24 hour clock. 

As regards 2400 that simply just does not exist anywhere or in any form, because there is no 25th hour, there is no period of 59 minutes that follows it i.e. there is no 2435, therefore there is no 24 hundred hours.


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## Trimmer (Nov 2, 2005)

Earl of Ormonde said:


> As regards 2400 that simply just does not exist anywhere or in any form, because there is no 24th hour, there is no period of 59 minutes that follows it i.e. there is no 2435, therefore there is no 24 hundred hours.


The Swiss railways have presumably dealt with this confusion by having time stand still for a second every head of the hour.


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

Trimmer said:


> The Swiss railways have presumably dealt with this confusion by having time stand still for a second every head of the hour.


An interesting solution.


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## De-Boj (Jul 5, 2009)

Earl of Ormonde said:


> Just to clarify what I meant earlier. The time 0000 actually belongs to 2 days. It is the exact end of one day & the exact start of the next, hence the confusion, hence it not being used by anyone. Each 0000 timepoint exists on 2 dates, that of the day that has finished and that of the day that is starting, and hence each date e.g. 11 Jan having two 0000 timepoints, and we're full circle, hence the fact that no one uses it. Because for example, the confusing text: "Time 0000 on 11 Jan" is 2 points in time that are 24 hours apart, one point being the exact start of 11 Jan., the other being the exact end of 11 Jan 24 hours later. Hence when it is needed and in my experience it is is rare, but it does happen, (as with the example I started with) the relevant time is either given as 2359 or 0001 - depending on which date is specified of course.


Wow this is actually a pretty neat discussion. Here is my .02. I served in the US navy for a few years. I was on a boat, and had to maintain Logs in port and underway. The US Navy uses 0000. In sailor jargon, this is "All Balls" or sometimes just "Balls". The colloquial name for the watch from Midnight to 0400 is "Balls to 4". 
In our Logs 0000 was where the midnight entry was made.
So one page of logs would end something like this:

2359: Logs continued on next page
-ther rest of the current page would be crossed out to not allow for any more entries on that day.

The first entry of the next page would be something like:
0000: The ship is moored Port/Starboard side to at Pier# ?? at Naval Base ?? using standard Mooring lines..... I think you get the idea.

So in my experience Midnight is 0000 and is the start of the next day.


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## JJR512 (May 18, 2010)

Earl of Ormonde said:


> Just to clarify what I meant earlier. The time 0000 actually belongs to 2 days. It is the exact end of one day & the exact start of the next, hence the confusion, hence it not being used by anyone. Each 0000 timepoint exists on 2 dates, that of the day that has finished and that of the day that is starting, and hence each date e.g. 11 Jan having two 0000 timepoints, and we're full circle, hence the fact that no one uses it. Because for example, the confusing text: "Time 0000 on 11 Jan" is 2 points in time that are 24 hours apart, one point being the exact start of 11 Jan., the other being the exact end of 11 Jan 24 hours later. Hence when it is needed and in my experience it is is rare, but it does happen, (as with the example I started with) the relevant time is either given as 2359 or 0001 - depending on which date is specified of course.
> 
> EVERYONE knows or should know this. And again that is why it isn't used. I hope now that that is crysral clear. But like I said I thought everyone already knew this basic fact of the 24 hour clock! Which is the first & most basic fact you learn in military training about using the 24 hour clock.


No. Wrong. Incorrect. Not right.

0000, or 00:00, or 12:00 am, however you choose to write it, belongs, like every other moment in time, to just one day. The previous day ends at the last moment before 0000. Whether you choose to say 2359, 23:59, or 12:59 pm, it doesn't matter. If you choose to add seconds and say 23:59:59, even if you choose to add fractions of a second...23:59:59.9999999999999 and you can write 9s out to infinity for all the difference it makes, as soon as you tick over to 00:00 the next day has started.



> As regards 2400 that simply just does not exist anywhere or in any form, because there is no 25th hour, there is no period of 59 minutes that follows it i.e. there is no 2435, therefore there is no 24 hundred hours.


No. Wrong. Incorrect. Not right.

First of all, as I already stated, 2400 is just as acceptable as 0000 according to the ISO 8601 standard that others have already introduced to this conversation. 0000 is more common.

Furthermore, regarding times like "2435"...


> Time-of-day notations beyond 24:00 (such as 24:01 or 25:59) are neither commonly used nor covered by any relevant standards. However, they have been observed occasionally in some special contexts in Japan and Hong Kong where business hours extend beyond midnight, such as broadcast-television production and with time-validation stamps on some European public transport systems, such as those used in Copenhagen, which may show, for example, 27:45 instead of 03:45.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24_hour_clock


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## Howard (Dec 7, 2004)

That was very interesting JJ. ^


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

JJR512 said:


> No. Wrong. Incorrect. Not right.
> 
> 0000, or 00:00, or 12:00 am, however you choose to write it, belongs, like every other moment in time, to just one day. The previous day ends at the last moment before 0000. Whether you choose to say 2359, 23:59, or 12:59 pm, it doesn't matter. If you choose to add seconds and say 23:59:59, even if you choose to add fractions of a second...23:59:59.9999999999999 and you can write 9s out to infinity for all the difference it makes, as soon as you tick over to 00:00 the next day has started.
> 
> ...


While you're relying on an incorrect page from unreliable Wikipedia, where anyone is free to write anything they like without any checks & balances as your source in this discussion, 
I'm relying on the experience and lessons learned from the everyday situations & observations of 30 years(so far) of combined military, police and Ministry of Defence service.

Good luck with Wiki! ....but it isn't the real world! And that's not how things work in practice.


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## Kurt N (Feb 11, 2009)

De-Boj said:


> Wow this is actually a pretty neat discussion. Here is my .02. I served in the US navy for a few years. I was on a boat, and had to maintain Logs in port and underway. The US Navy uses 0000. In sailor jargon, this is "All Balls" or sometimes just "Balls". The colloquial name for the watch from Midnight to 0400 is "Balls to 4".
> In our Logs 0000 was where the midnight entry was made.
> So one page of logs would end something like this:
> 
> ...


I don't know about logs, but naval messages sent at midnight are officially required to fudge the time stamp so as to avoid ambiguity. This is from the Naval Telecomm. Proc. manual, NTP 3 (J):

504. DATE TIME GROUP (DTG) INDICATOR
The DTG is assigned to uniquely describe a message for identification and file purposes only. A DTG has two parts. The first is expressed in six digits; the first two digits represent
the day, and the next four represent the time. ... The zone suffix ZULU (Z), for Greenwich Mean Time, is used as the universal time for all messages except in cases where theater or area commanders prescribe the use of local time during tactical operations. *The times 2400Z and 0000Z shall not be used, instead 2359Z or 0001Z shall be used as appropriate.*


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## De-Boj (Jul 5, 2009)

Kurt N said:


> I don't know about logs, but naval messages sent at midnight are officially required to fudge the time stamp so as to avoid ambiguity. This is from the Naval Telecomm. Proc. manual, NTP 3 (J):
> 
> 504. DATE TIME GROUP (DTG) INDICATOR
> The DTG is assigned to uniquely describe a message for identification and file purposes only. A DTG has two parts. The first is expressed in six digits; the first two digits represent
> the day, and the next four represent the time. ... The zone suffix ZULU (Z), for Greenwich Mean Time, is used as the universal time for all messages except in cases where theater or area commanders prescribe the use of local time during tactical operations. *The times 2400Z and 0000Z shall not be used, instead 2359Z or 0001Z shall be used as appropriate.*


Thats Intresting. Being that I was an FT (ss), and never in the radio room, I will defer to you on this. Might that have something to do with conforming Naval messages to a NATO standard? I can tell you that OPNAVINST 3100.7B uses 0000 for Deck Logs (This is the pub we used for Topside Logs when in port).


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

Kurt N said:


> I don't know about logs, but naval messages sent at midnight are officially required to fudge the time stamp so as to avoid ambiguity. This is from the Naval Telecomm. Proc. manual, NTP 3 (J):
> 
> 504. DATE TIME GROUP (DTG) INDICATOR
> The DTG is assigned to uniquely describe a message for identification and file purposes only. A DTG has two parts. The first is expressed in six digits; the first two digits represent
> the day, and the next four represent the time. ... The zone suffix ZULU (Z), for Greenwich Mean Time, is used as the universal time for all messages except in cases where theater or area commanders prescribe the use of local time during tactical operations. *The times 2400Z and 0000Z shall not be used, instead 2359Z or 0001Z shall be used as appropriate.*


Thank you Kurt, someone else from the real military world who is aware of the problems associated with 0000. On our police logs we always wrote MN (midnight) or moved the entry a minute either way 2359 or 0001.


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## Apatheticviews (Mar 21, 2010)

USMC format is "20110113" (YEAR MONTH DAY) on non-correspondence, which actually makes it easy for destruction of documents (2 year shelf life). On correspondence, it is "13 Jan 2010" per the USN Correspondence Manual (which is probably a century old).


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## Apatheticviews (Mar 21, 2010)

Kurt N said:


> I don't know about logs, but naval messages sent at midnight are officially required to fudge the time stamp so as to avoid ambiguity. This is from the Naval Telecomm. Proc. manual, NTP 3 (J):
> 
> 504. DATE TIME GROUP (DTG) INDICATOR
> The DTG is assigned to uniquely describe a message for identification and file purposes only. A DTG has two parts. The first is expressed in six digits; the first two digits represent
> the day, and the next four represent the time. ... The zone suffix ZULU (Z), for Greenwich Mean Time, is used as the universal time for all messages except in cases where theater or area commanders prescribe the use of local time during tactical operations. *The times 2400Z and 0000Z shall not be used, instead 2359Z or 0001Z shall be used as appropriate.*


Logs are "informal" documentation, and use local time (unless proscribed otherwise by the Captain or the local commander). They are consolidated (as needed) into the "formal" message process, for reporting between commands, or into the correspondence process if within the command. But just because something is "informal" doesn't mean it isn't essential.

Timestamps should avoid ambiguity whenever possible, which is why 0000/2400Z is not used since it often misunderstood whether midnight is the end of the day or the beginning of the day. This could result in an event being reported on either the 23rd or the 24th depending on how it was read.


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## Apatheticviews (Mar 21, 2010)

Most digital watches refer to Midnight as 0000 when in 24hr format just a quick reference. Regardless of whether that is "correct" it is the "accepted" standard of timekeeping, by the timekeeping industry.


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## Chouan (Nov 11, 2009)

Apatheticviews said:


> Most digital watches refer to Midnight as 0000 when in 24hr format just a quick reference. Regardless of whether that is "correct" it is the "accepted" standard of timekeeping, by the timekeeping industry.


We got away with it in our Logs by never having times unless something happened at that time, which would never be at midnight. For example: 
2345 Cap Gris Nez bearing 110 x 7'.4, a/c to 201.
If the point at which a course was to be changed was at midnight, the realirty would be that the change of course would always take at least a minute, so could always be called 2359, or 0001.
End of the watch a comment on conditions. eg
Moderate sea, cloudy, fine & clear.
So no need to write 0000 or 2400 at all.


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

Apatheticviews said:


> Timestamps should avoid ambiguity whenever possible, which is why 0000/2400Z is not used since it often misunderstood whether midnight is the end of the day or the beginning of the day. This could result in an event being reported on either the 23rd or the 24th depending on how it was read.


Thank you, which was exactly one of the points I was making earlier.


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

Chouan said:


> We got away with it in our Logs by never having times unless something happened at that time.


Well exactly, that was the same with police logs both in the control room and on the Area car.


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

Apatheticviews said:


> On correspondence, it is "13 Jan 2010" per the USN Correspondence Manual (which is probably a century old).


On docs we've received from the DHS (and years ago from the old Fema) I've noted that.


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## Kurt N (Feb 11, 2009)

Earl of Ormonde said:


> Thank you Kurt, someone else from the real military world who is aware of the problems associated with 0000. On our police logs we always wrote MN (midnight) or moved the entry a minute either way 2359 or 0001.


How is MN for midnight any better than 2400 or 0000? But anyway, I think the whole thing is less of an issue with logs, since an entry labeled 0000 or 2400, or MN, will normally be part of a running sequence of entries, and thus won't be unambiguous. The ambiguity of 0000 or 2400 is more of a problem for a message or other document that stands on its own.


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## JJR512 (May 18, 2010)

Yeah you can talk about an "incorrect page" on "unreliable Wikipedia" all you want but the fact is that's a cheap shot and an easy way to back out of the argument without actually saying anything. Another fact is that that particular article is only incorrect in your mind because you don't like what it says, and yet another fact is that the particular article has good references. I could quote from the references if it would make you feel better. Would that make you feel better?

You can also talk about the "real world" and your experience all you want, too. A lifetime of experience doesn't make something right.

Now I've already stipulated that you are correct about your rules of documentation. I have no doubt that you have rules about writing 0000 or 2400. That's nice. But what you said in the beginning was that those times do not exist, and that is just plain false, as I've demonstrated many times. Oh, you've gone on and on about your documentation, about how the military and police assume that their members are too stupid to understand a simple concept like "Midnight = the start of a day", and that's nice and all, but you have yet to even attempt to show how 0000 does not exist.

And you've gone in even deeper to say that the moment of midnight exists both at the end of the previous day and at the beginning of the next day, and I explained that that's wrong, but all you could say is that Wikipedia is unreliable. Guess what: My argument doesn't come from Wikipedia. It comes from _common sense_. No single moment in time can exist at two different times at the same single time. The last moment of one day is one moment in time. The first moment of the next day is another separate moment in time. No one single time (midnight) can exist at both of those two separate times. But all you can say to that is that Wikipedia is unreliable. Huh.

And THAT is how time works in the _real world_, every single day, regardless of what the military or the police say. The military and the police are NOT the "real world" any more than Wikipedia is. They're all just a part of it. And they and you can all choose to see what you want and figure out how it works in a way that makes sense to you, and that's nice. And if it makes sense to you that a particular moment of time somehow simultaneously occurs on two different days, well that's nice too. But THAT, my friend, is most certainly _not_ the "real world".

Just remember this: The military (or police, or whoever) has caused you to experience 30 years of "there's no such thing as 0000" because they apparently assume you're too stupid to grasp a simple concept like "0000 is the start of the day", which doesn't seem ambiguous or difficult to understand at all, at least not to me. Just because that's what they want you to think doesn't make it true.


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## Kurt N (Feb 11, 2009)

Ouch, JJ! For you, I recommend the decaf.

I believe what the Earl wrote was that "it just doesn't exist in the 24 hour clock _as used by professionals_." I don't think he or anyone else here was making a claim about the actual flow of time, nor was he or anyone else denying that one could in principle have a convention that 0000 exactly means this or that. He was just saying (so far as I can tell) that in practice a lot of organizations avoid 0000 and 2400. Maybe you don't like how he said it, but this is a debate about terminology, not metaphysics.


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## JJR512 (May 18, 2010)

Kurt N said:


> Ouch, JJ! For you, I recommend the decaf.
> 
> I believe what the Earl wrote was that "it just doesn't exist in the 24 hour clock _as used by professionals_." I don't think he or anyone else here was making a claim about the actual flow of time, nor was he or anyone else denying that one could in principle have a convention that 0000 exactly means this or that. He was just saying (so far as I can tell) that in practice a lot of organizations avoid 0000 and 2400. Maybe you don't like how he said it, but this is a debate about terminology, not metaphysics.


I don't drink coffee at all (well, rarely); lately I've been drinking pretty much only water. Thank you for your concern, though. And as I've already expressed at least twice that I can recall, I understand he is talking about terminology. But I further recall statements to the effect that 0000 does not exist, statements to the effect that there is _not_ a two-minute difference between 2359 and 0001 (which oddly came right before a statement that there _was_ a two-minute difference), and statements to the effect that 0000 somehow exists on two different days at the same time. These are all things that were stated as facts, and all of them are incorrect. As I've said, if that's how he or you or anyone else has been taught to _document_ then that's fine, but to say that these are actual real-world truths is just flat-out wrong.


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## De-Boj (Jul 5, 2009)

Apatheticviews said:


> Logs are "informal" documentation, and use local time (unless proscribed otherwise by the Captain or the local commander). They are consolidated (as needed) into the "formal" message process, for reporting between commands, or into the correspondence process if within the command. But just because something is "informal" doesn't mean it isn't essential.
> 
> Timestamps should avoid ambiguity whenever possible, which is why 0000/2400Z is not used since it often misunderstood whether midnight is the end of the day or the beginning of the day. This could result in an event being reported on either the 23rd or the 24th depending on how it was read.


O.K. this makes sense. Logs are sequential, where messages are sent periodically, and depending on many different factors, may not be read until later (I was on a submarine, all of our message traffic would sit in a buffer until we could send/recieve... which could take days). The need to cheat a minute comes into more focus.

That doesn't change the fact that 0000 is commonly used in the US fleet. Just because they do it one way in the radio room, does not mean that everyone in the fleet is doing it that way. To say that 0000 doesn't exist in a bit of a stretch.

With that being said, I see where you are coming from.


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## dwebber18 (Jun 5, 2008)

In my line of work I write time and date numerous times of day. As it is entered in to the computer it must be in a certain fashion say: 12:00:00 011311. As this is now my habit I always write 1/13/2011 or 1/13/11. I do not however typically write the time outside of work but when I speak of the time I do not do so in military units.


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

JJR512 said:


> Yeah you can talk about an "incorrect page" on "unreliable Wikipedia" all you want but the fact is that's a cheap shot and an easy way to back out of the argument without actually saying anything. Another fact is that that particular article is only incorrect in your mind because you don't like what it says, and yet another fact is that the particular article has good references. I could quote from the references if it would make you feel better. Would that make you feel better?
> 
> You can also talk about the "real world" and your experience all you want, too. A lifetime of experience doesn't make something right.
> 
> ...


Oh dear!


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## Apatheticviews (Mar 21, 2010)

De-Boj said:


> O.K. this makes sense. Logs are sequential, where messages are sent periodically, and depending on many different factors, may not be read until later (I was on a submarine, all of our message traffic would sit in a buffer until we could send/recieve... which could take days). The need to cheat a minute comes into more focus.
> 
> That doesn't change the fact that 0000 is commonly used in the US fleet. Just because they do it one way in the radio room, does not mean that everyone in the fleet is doing it that way. To say that 0000 doesn't exist in a bit of a stretch.
> 
> With that being said, I see where you are coming from.


It's not that 0000 doesn't exist, it's that it is an "imprecise" form of expression when combined with a date. We all know what Midnight is. We know it to be 12am or 2400Z or 0000Z or whatever you want to call it. It is the point where one day ends and the next begins. However, when you write out documents, specifically documents which require PEOPLE to be one place or another (or that place them at a specific time & place) you have to remove ambiguity.

With a sequential log, ambiguity is a non-issue. With messages, and correspondence it can very much be an issue.

As an example, all modern US Military orders have a reporting date/time of NLT (No Later than) 23:59 Local of the day in question, to the duty officer of the command. All ambiguity disappears, since you know you must be there prior to midnight of that day (prior to the following day).

A similar example, which shows just how confusing these ambiguities can be: "We should get together this coming week for lunch." When does the week end? Is it on Friday with the end of the work week? (for those whose work week ends on Friday.. Mine ends on Tuesday). is it Saturday leading to Sunday? Or is it monday morning?

One of my personal pet peeves is when the radio stations call June 21st the 1st day of summer... Midsummer's Eve, which is a full 6 weeks into summer. This implies that December 21st is the 1st day of winter. But this just highlights the conversation we are having.


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

Apatheticviews said:


> It's not that 0000 doesn't exist, it's that it is an "imprecise" form of expression when combined with a date. We all know what Midnight is. We know it to be 12am or 2400Z or 0000Z or whatever you want to call it. *It is the point where one day ends and the next begins. However, when you write out documents, specifically documents which require PEOPLE to be one place or another (or that place them at a specific time & place) you have to remove ambiguity.*
> 
> With a sequential log, ambiguity is a non-issue. With messages, and correspondence it can very much be an issue.
> 
> ...


Thanks again, my points exactly. For those of us who work with such documents on a daily basis it's an obvious thing. It seems to be less obvious from the responses here to those who don't.


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## JJR512 (May 18, 2010)

Earl of Ormonde said:


> Thanks again, my points exactly. For those of us who work with such documents on a daily basis it's an obvious thing. It seems to be less obvious from the responses here to those who don't.


Documents like what, documents that require a time stamp? OK, I've transported roughly 3,000 patients by ambulance and all of them required multiple time stamps. When the call was made, when we got to the patient, when we started transporting, when we got to the destination, and when we cleared. And obviously, it's not obvious to me.

I'll tell you what IS obvious to me, though. Midnight = the start of the day; that's a fact, and doesn't need to be obvious, it just needs to be known. Once known, anyone seeing 0000, or 00:00, or however you choose to write it, should know that whatever it was that happened at that time happened at the start of the day.

If a call for transport came in at 11:15 pm, I would write 2315 in the appropriate spot. Then I got to the patient at 2330, began transporting at 2342, arrived at destination at 0000, and cleared at 0020.

None of these time stamps include the date, but there is one spot on the form for the date of the call. Nobody with half a brain should ever be confused about which date the arrival at destination happened on. Obviously it's the next day, because I can't very well get the patient to the destination 23 hours 15 minutes before the call even came in.


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## Apatheticviews (Mar 21, 2010)

JJR512 said:


> Documents like what, documents that require a time stamp? OK, I've transported roughly 3,000 patients by ambulance and all of them required multiple time stamps. When the call was made, when we got to the patient, when we started transporting, when we got to the destination, and when we cleared. And obviously, it's not obvious to me.
> 
> I'll tell you what IS obvious to me, though. Midnight = the start of the day; that's a fact, and doesn't need to be obvious, it just needs to be known. Once known, anyone seeing 0000, or 00:00, or however you choose to write it, should know that whatever it was that happened at that time happened at the start of the day.
> 
> ...


Think about how stupid the average person is, and remember half the population is dumber than that. - George Carlin

And BTW Midnight is *both the start and end of the day*. It's not just the start. The first second of the day is 0000:01, not 0000:00. Just like there is no year 0 CE/AD. That makes the last second of the day *0000:00 or 2400:00* depending on how people write it. When the clock passes midnight, it is a new day, this is known. When a clock approaches midnight, it is the same day, this is known.

You however have just shown that what midnight is, is ambiguous at best.

In your field, time/date stamps are not used because you don't need them. As others have shown, including myself, other fields such as military and police do require both time & date, because there is ambiguity. We use messages which travel at different speeds (Routine, Priority, Flash), which are queued based on need, and then time, and it can be DAYS before a routine message catches up to a Flash message which was written at the same time. A little thing like 2359 vs 0000 can literally change our perception of the battlespace based on how the report is perceived. Discounting something as "old data" because of it.

What you are saying is no different than saying Winter/2010. Which one? Jan/Feb 2010 or Nov/Dec 2010? They are 10 months apart.

That is a huge difference. What may seem obvious to you is not so clear cut to others, which is exactly why the military has regulations for dealing with it. Why would we dedicate unnecessary space in a correspondence manual to unneeded fluff, if it wasn't an issue? Perhaps your organization has not hit the stage where ambiguity has created enough administrative requirement for it, but the USMC, and most Naval forces have.


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## Howard (Dec 7, 2004)

So The "0000" originates from the Army?


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

JJR512 said:


> Midnight = the start of the day


Also the end of the day, hence the problem!


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

Apatheticviews said:


> but the USMC, and most Naval forces have.


Exactly, and the same applies for the same reason for the British armed forces and UK police forces.


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## JJR512 (May 18, 2010)

Apatheticviews said:


> And BTW Midnight is *both the start and end of the day*. It's not just the start. The first second of the day is 0000:01, not 0000:00. Just like there is no year 0 CE/AD. That makes the last second of the day *0000:00 or 2400:00* depending on how people write it. When the clock passes midnight, it is a new day, this is known. When a clock approaches midnight, it is the same day, this is known.


No. Wrong. Incorrect. Not right.

Don't believe me? Find a digital clock with a seconds display, the kind of clock with no memory so that when it loses power, it starts at the beginning. Unplug it, then plug it back in while looking at it. Did it start at 12:00:00 am or 12:00:01 am? Because every clock like this I've ever seen starts at 12:00:00 am.

Need more proof? Look at an analog clock with a second hand. When the second hand is pointing straight up, at the tick by the 12, which represents the _beginning_ of an hour, does that tick mark represent 00 or 01 for seconds? It represents 00. 01 is the next tick mark, 05 is by the 1, and so on.

You cannot compare minutes/seconds/hours to days/years. Seconds, minutes, and hours are named, or labeled, based on when they _started_, not when they _ended. This is why there is no Hour 24 in a day even though there are 24 hours in a day. The hours are called 0, 1, 2, 3...22, 23, and if you count those up of course you get 24, but again, there is no Hour 24.

Days and years, on the other hand (and also months and even weeks for that matter), are named, or labeled, based on when they end. Days and years go by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. The first day was Day 1. The first year was Year 1. The last year of the first century was Year 100. But the first second of a minute isn't 01 any more than the last second is 60. The first second is 00, and the last is 59.

The day starts at 00 hours, 00 minutes, and 00 seconds. It doesn't matter if it's called 12:00:00 am or 0000 or 00:00 or 00:00:00, the last digit is always 0, not 1. The last second of the previous day is 23 hours, 59 minutes, and 59 seconds.

I understand that if you want something to end at the end of the day, it's easier and makes more sense to write 0000 rather than 2359, because many people, maybe even most people, would interpret that as the thing is supposed to end one minute before midnight. And if you're talking about something that is supposed to end at the end of today, it would be assumed by most people that if you write 0000 (or 12:00 am), you mean 0000 of tomorrow rather than today because you can't very well end something at the start of today, not if you're starting it today. But if you were writing a full timestamp for precision, you would right it as 0000 on tomorrow's date. I understand that for logs and other uses, there are practical reasons to sometimes avoid using 0000. My complaint is with statements like it doesn't exist, or that time goes from 2359 to 0001 with nothing in between, or that there isn't 2 minutes between those two times but there are :confused2:, or that nobody needs that minute or whatever or that it's not important, or that one single moment in time exists on two different days, or that seconds start at 01 and not 00, and so on.

For the purposes of the logs...I get it. Just don't confuse what's being done for certain specific reasons with actual reality._


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## Apatheticviews (Mar 21, 2010)

JJR512 said:


> You cannot compare minutes/seconds/hours to days/years.


They are all units of time, which are various length. They are directly comparable. 1 second = 1/60th of a minute = 1/24 of a day = 1/7th of week = 1/52~ of a year.

You are arguing that every of measurement of time is different "except" the smallest unit, while offering proof of MAN-MADE instruments such as analog clocks (which are no proof at all), and the factory reset of digital clocks (which was merely a preference of the manufacturer). You state that there is no Hour 24, which is a MILITARY term, which is meant to remove ambiguity (no AM or PM designation), yet there is also no 0 hour on non-military clocks.

According to you, that means we number things 12,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11. That is clearly in defiance of logic. The 12 o'clock hour is the last hour in sequence, and it is merely through "tradition" that we place the divider of days where it lies. But let's use some basic English to prove my side.

Why do we have a term like "Afternoon"? I state it is because it is a definitive ending point of the morning. Anything that follows it (even by 1 second) is Afternoon. Noon (also known as Midday = Middle of the Day) is not Afternoon. Therefore if Noon is an ending point, so is Midnight, or "The middle of the Night" hence the word. It is the point which is EXACTLY halfway between one day and the following. It belongs to both, and neither.

Stating that I am "Wrong. Incorrect. Not Right." will not work here because we are talking language conventions, not mechanical conventions. The 24 hour clock system is merely a means of standardizing something that was done before mechanical timekeeping.

Dusk led to Sunset which began Twilight which led to Night, which led to Midnight which led to Night with led to Twilight which led to Sunrise which led to Dawn which led to Morning to Midday/Noon which led to Afternoon which led to Dusk. Unfortunately these things don't happen in nice 1/24th hour increments. They come close over the course of the year, but they are far from perfect. Sunrise gets earlier, Sunset gets later, and vice versa. We adjust our clocks based on agricultural needs (Daylight Savings Time). We have removed an entire week from the calendar based on the need to keep leap years straight (99/400ths add up).

You speak of counting starting at 0. I state clearly and definitively, no one does that. It's silly. We start at 1 and move up. 0/Zero is a placeholder, just as Midnight/Noon is a Placeholder. It is a transition from one numbering convention to another. We just happen to be using a rotating one, vice a traditionally linear one.


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## JJR512 (May 18, 2010)

Apatheticviews said:


> They are all units of time, which are various length. They are directly comparable. 1 second = 1/60th of a minute = 1/24 of a day = 1/7th of week = 1/52~ of a year.


They are comparable as units of time. They are _convertible_ as units of time, too, as you point out. But we were not talking about comparing a second to a day in terms of the length of time; we were talking about comparing them in terms of how they are counted, and on _that_ basis, they do not work the same way.



> You are arguing that every of measurement of time is different "except" the smallest unit, while offering proof of MAN-MADE instruments such as analog clocks (which are no proof at all), and the factory reset of digital clocks (which was merely a preference of the manufacturer). You state that there is no Hour 24, which is a MILITARY term, which is meant to remove ambiguity (no AM or PM designation), yet there is also no 0 hour on non-military clocks.


No, I am am not arguing that "every measurement of time is different 'except' the smallest unit." I didn't except only the smallest unit. I also included minutes and hours in the same category as seconds. I believe I stated that pretty explicitly and clearly. Please read what I write thoroughly before telling me what I said.

You say Hour 24 is a military term. You also say there is no Hour 0 on non-military clocks; this implies that there is one on military clocks. If there is both an Hour 0 and an Hour 24 on military clocks, then military clocks run 25 hours. Write down every number from 0 to 24 and count how many numbers you wrote down if you don't get that.

In a previous post, I wrote that midnight can be written as 2400, per ISO standard, to indicate the end of the day. That does not mean there is an Hour 24 on a clock. I was referring to _whole_ hours.



> According to you, that means we number things 12,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11. That is clearly in defiance of logic. The 12 o'clock hour is the last hour in sequence, and it is merely through "tradition" that we place the divider of days where it lies. But let's use some basic English to prove my side.


I agree that it defies logic, but that doesn't change the fact that that's the way we tell time. The hour starting at 12:00 am (0000) is the first hour of the day. The hour starting at 1:00 am (0100) is the second hour of the day. Even my kids grasp that concept.



> Why do we have a term like "Afternoon"? I state it is because it is a definitive ending point of the morning. Anything that follows it (even by 1 second) is Afternoon. Noon (also known as Midday = Middle of the Day) is not Afternoon. Therefore if Noon is an ending point, so is Midnight, or "The middle of the Night" hence the word. It is the point which is EXACTLY halfway between one day and the following. It belongs to both, and neither.


Afternoon is not the end of the morning. 11:59:59 is the last second of morning, and morning has ended at the moment the clock ticks over to noon, 12:00 pm (1200). Afternoon starts, unsurprisingly, after noon. Noon, like midnight, is but a single moment or point in time. Everything after that moment is afternoon. Morning and afternoon, on a time scale, don't even touch. They are separated by that moment called "noon".



> Stating that I am "Wrong. Incorrect. Not Right." will not work here because we are talking language conventions, not mechanical conventions. The 24 hour clock system is merely a means of standardizing something that was done before mechanical timekeeping.
> 
> Dusk led to Sunset which began Twilight which led to Night, which led to Midnight which led to Night with led to Twilight which led to Sunrise which led to Dawn which led to Morning to Midday/Noon which led to Afternoon which led to Dusk. Unfortunately these things don't happen in nice 1/24th hour increments. They come close over the course of the year, but they are far from perfect. Sunrise gets earlier, Sunset gets later, and vice versa. We adjust our clocks based on agricultural needs (Daylight Savings Time). We have removed an entire week from the calendar based on the need to keep leap years straight (99/400ths add up).


And this is all interesting but has nothing to do with the issue at hand. You are talking about _concepts_ of time, like "twilight" and "afternoon". I'm looking at the Oxford English Dictionary right now (not some unabridged or condensed version, but the publisher's own CD-ROM copy of the complete 20-volume set), and there is no definition for "afternoon" that says what time, precisely, it starts or ends. Afternoon is "the time from mid-day to evening". And evening, the end point in time of the afternoon, is also not defined by any precise time; evening is "the coming on of 'even', the process or fact of growing dusk; the time at which this takes place, the time about sunset". Evening doesn't even have a precise _relative_ definition; it's not _exactly_ the moment of midnight, or some specific amount of time before or after it; it's only "about" sunset.

My point is that this isn't really relevant to the issue being debated currently.



> You speak of counting starting at 0. I state clearly and definitively, no one does that. It's silly. We start at 1 and move up. 0/Zero is a placeholder, just as Midnight/Noon is a Placeholder. It is a transition from one numbering convention to another. We just happen to be using a rotating one, vice a traditionally linear one.


I do not say we start counting seconds, minutes, or hours at 0. The first second is the first second. The first second is Second 01. What I said is that clocks, and timekeeping in general, indicate the number of the second, minute, or hour that's _most recently ended._ In other words (and as I said before), a clock does not say 01 until one whole second has gone by. Days, weeks, years, decades, centuries, and millennia, on the other hand, are labeled by what it currently is.

A day is timed from beginning to end with time starting at 0. If you could pull a single day out of eternity and just look at the flow of time, before time even starts going by, the clock is set at 00:00:00. You push the big GO button for this one day, and time starts ticking...as soon as one entire second has transpired, the clock is updated to read 00:00:01.

You say we don't count like that, but that's because nobody ever bothers to start at zero because it isn't important. I don't count how many apples I have when I have none. If you want to give me apples, one at a time, I don't say, "OK, I have zero apples." Then you hand me one and I say "I have one apple". Then you hand me another and I say "I have two apples". People don't talk like that, you're absolutely right about that. But the fact is, even though I never said "I have zero apples," before you handed me that first one, that's exactly what I had: zero apples. And time is the same way. Before one second has gone by, zero seconds have gone by, and that's why clocks start at 0. Or 12 (and I agree, that doesn't make sense logically, but that's the way it is, like it or not).

*Clocks (seconds, minutes, hours) show you how much time has gone by. Calendars (days, weeks, months, years, and so on) show you which one you're in now. That's the difference.*


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## Apatheticviews (Mar 21, 2010)

JJR512 said:


> *Clocks (seconds, minutes, hours) show you how much time has gone by. Calendars (days, weeks, months, years, and so on) show you which one you're in now. That's the difference.*


Clocks show you the current TIME. Not how much time has gone by. Clocks, just like calendars show you your current location in the 4th Dimension. Time is a Location just like Width, Depth, and Length. They are no different than a Map which shows your position in 2-3 Dimensions.

There are however functions on modern watches which do show how much time has gone by, without doing calculations. Chronometers (or Stopwatches) show how much time has gone by. They are equatable to Rulers, Yardsticks, or any other form of measurement. Clocks however do not show measurement, in and of themselves.

The simplest clock is a Sundial. It shows the Earth's (the specific point it stands on) relative Sun position. If the is directly overhead (for those in the northern hemisphere that will be slightly to the South), then it is noon, or Midday (Middle of the Day), the Transition period between Morning and Afternoon. Noon is part of neither. The same can be said for Midnight, which is the Transition period from Evening to Morning. Every other form of clock takes its form and general function from the Sundial.

There is no 25th hour, but there is a 2400 timestamp. There is also a 0000 timestamp. You have stated in writing both are acceptable according to ISO standards. If both are acceptable according to ISO standards, and they are equal, then this is acknowledgement from that community that that specific "point in time" is part of both days. It is a transition point. It's just a different way of writing the same thing. Saturday 2400 = 0000 Sunday. Both are midnight.

Midnight is an arbitrary designation of when the new day begins. It used to be Sunrise. Sunrise changes every day, so they standardized it. Midnight is always the same. Makes it easier to set a modern watch to. This is a case of adjusting previous standards to new technology. If we had arbitrarily assigned 3am as the "new day" (which we can do by converting the local timestamp to one of its neighbors), the problem would just exist at a different point. But using Sunrise (the original means), our change from one day to the next was when the sun crested the horizon. When it was below the horizon, or touching (but not over) it was night (specifically Dawn). It was only at the point where it had actually CROSSED the horizon where it became a new day.

The same can be said for clocks. When the clock strikes 12, you are transitioning (it is touching the horizon, so to speak). When the clock ticks to 12:00:01 it is a new day. Break down those seconds as far as you want, but 11:59:59-12:00:00 are part of one day, and 12:00:00-12:00:01 are what defines the next. They share an instance. All mathematical systems which use a rotating scale do.


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

JJR512 said:


> Clocks (seconds, minutes, hours) show you how much time has gone by.


No they don't. They tell you what the time is NOW.

Time gone by? relative to what, since when?


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## JJR512 (May 18, 2010)

Apatheticviews said:


> Clocks show you the current TIME. Not how much time has gone by. Clocks, just like calendars show you your current location in the 4th Dimension. Time is a Location just like Width, Depth, and Length. They are no different than a Map which shows your position in 2-3 Dimensions.





Earl of Ormonde said:


> No they don't. They tell you what the time is NOW.
> 
> Time gone by? relative to what, since when?


So when a 24h clock says 00:15, it's telling me that it is the zeroth hour, 15 minutes? And when a 24h clock says it's 0130, it's the first hour, 30 minutes?

No. As Apatheticviews has already pointed out, we don't start counting at zero. We start at zero but don't actually start counting until we have at least one. The first hour is the one that starts 00:00:00 (nothing, no time has gone by since the beginning of the day, since this is the first moment of the day) and ends 3600 seconds later at 00:59:59. The second hour is the one that starts at 01:00:00 and ends 3600 seconds later at 01:59:59.

When we are in the first hour of the day, the hour display on the clock says 00 (or 12, on a 12h clock). When we are in the second hour of the day, the hour display on the clock says 01. Thus the basis for the true statement that a clock shows you the last full measurement of time completed. When a clock shows the hour is 01, the last full hour of the day to complete was the first hour, the hour from 00:00:00 to 00:59:59.

When a clock shows the hour is 00, the last full hour to be completed was the 24th hour of the previous day. Or, to put it another way, it also shows that ZERO whole hours have been completed since the start of the current day.

And EoO, to answer your other questions, relative to the start of next-biggest unit of time. For example, if the clock shows 01:55, it shows you that 55 minutes have gone by since the beginning of the second hour of the day. At 01:55, you are in the 56th minute of the second hour of the day. Sometimes, the time can be relative to the start of an earlier day. Earlier, you said something to the effect that there are no such times with hours >24, but as I pointed out, this isn't true. For example, some businesses in Japan and Hong Kong that are opened past midnight; they could use a time such as 26:15, which shows that 26 whole hours and 15 whole minutes have gone by since the start of the previous day (and they are currently in the 16th minute of the 27th hour). Note, however, that although they did not reset their time counting at midnight, a new day still did, in fact, start. This seemingly obvious fact will be important later...



> There is no 25th hour, but there is a 2400 timestamp. There is also a 0000 timestamp. You have stated in writing both are acceptable according to ISO standards. If both are acceptable according to ISO standards, and they are equal, then this is acknowledgement from that community that that specific "point in time" is part of both days. It is a transition point. It's just a different way of writing the same thing. Saturday 2400 = 0000 Sunday. Both are midnight.


Yes, both are midnight. I've already said several times already that both are acceptable as a written form to indicate midnight. But it does not mean that the moment in time is part of two days. That's ridiculous and absurd. Days do not overlap, period. No part of any day can occur within some other day at the same time as its own day.

2400 is acceptable to indicate midnight if it's easier to understand in relative terms, in other words if it's easier to understand, or clearer to indicate, that you mean the end of today rather than the start of tomorrow. But it actually does mean the start of tomorrow.

You could start counting hours at the beginning of today, and at 02:15 tomorrow, you could write the time as 26:15 if for some reason you wanted to. In this case, you're going against common practice but you wouldn't be the first; see what I wrote earlier about this. And remember that even though you didn't reset your time keeping at midnight, a new day still did in fact start at that moment. So this means that now, instead of indicating time passed since the beginning of today, you're indicating time passed since the beginning of yesterday. This is true for 26:15 and it's true for 2400.

24:00 indicates that 24 whole hours have gone by since the start of yesterday. 0000 indicates that 0 whole hours have gone by since the start of today. Both moments occur in the same day, because they occur at the same time. 24:00 and 00:00 are the exact same moment in time, just as 26:15 is the exact same moment in time as 02:15. And just like 26:15 and 02:15 both happen in the same day (because they're the same moment in time), 24:00 and 00:00 also both happen in the same day (because they're the same moment in time).



> ...The same can be said for clocks. When the clock strikes 12, you are transitioning (it is touching the horizon, so to speak). When the clock ticks to 12:00:01 it is a new day. Break down those seconds as far as you want, but 11:59:59-12:00:00 are part of one day, and 12:00:00-12:00:01 are what defines the next. They share an instance. All mathematical systems which use a rotating scale do.


No. Again, 12:00:00 (or 00:00:00) cannot be part of two different days. It is not both the last moment of one day as well as the first moment of another day. And as you said, you can break down the seconds as far as you want; you can have 23:59:59.99999 and continue writing 9s out to infinity, but as soon as the clock ticks over to 00:00:00, the next day has started. And no instant in time can exist in more than one day.


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## Apatheticviews (Mar 21, 2010)

Midnight is part of both days in the same way that 0 (Zero) is both a Negative & a Positive number (or neither a Negative and a Positive number if you prefer). It is a POINT in time. A day is a LENGTH in time. POINTS exist in Single Dimensional Space. LENGTHS exist in Multi-Dimensional Space. This is a basic math concept. Midnight is the Intersection between two LENGTHS of time. Draw the days out as a Wave (another mathematical construct) that transverses a Line at every 12o'clock point. Each intersection will represent a shift from AM to PM or vice Versa. The intersection however will belong to neither side of the wave diagram.

Every day ends at Midnight. This is an absolutely true statement. It does not end one second before Midnight. It ends at midnight. Every day begins at Midnight. This is also an absolutely true statement. The last second (a length of Time) of the day begins at 23:59:59 and ends at 24:00:00. The first second of the day ends at 00:00:01 (having begun at Midnight). The end point of one is the beginning point of the other. 

You are using Integer math to describe a Geometric concept. You are describing clocks as Time Measuring devices, when in fact they are Temporal-spacial devices. They tell you where you are in the same way that a GPS tells you are. Sure you can use their added functions to provide measurement, but in and of themselves they merely tell you what point you are the 4th Dimension.


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## JJR512 (May 18, 2010)

If you want to look at it as points and lines, fine.

A day is a line, as you say. Two different days are two different lines. You can put these two lines one right after the other, touching each other, to represent two sequential days. The lines touch but do not overlap. Where the first one ends, the next one begins. Midnight is the point at one end of each line, and _only_ at one end. Midnight does not happen twice in one day. It only happens at one end. In our perception of the flow of time, we would say it's at the start or beginning of the line.

If you want you can think of two days as two yardsticks. Each yardstick is a day. Midnight is the first point on each yardstick. If you put two yardsticks together, end to end, they touch, but do not overlap.

You can say a day ends at midnight in the sense that when midnight occurs, the day is over; if you choose to say it like that, I'd agree. But the midnight is still part of the next day.

Here is another way of looking at it. Suppose you have an audio recording of a live concert, start to finish, on a CD. Because it is live, with applause, the sound continues from the start of the CD to the end; there is never a moment of silence. But to make it easy to get to any particular songs, the CD publisher has put track markers on the disc, so you can skip to any particular song. If you listen to the CD from start to finish, the track number increases periodically, but there is no interruption to the continuous sound; if you weren't looking at the CD player's display, you'd have no way of knowing exactly when one track ends and another begins. But the first moment of sound on Track 2 exists only on Track 2; it does not also exist on Track 1. When Track 2 starts, Track 1 ends. But the beginning of Track 2 is part of only Track 2.

Every day ends at the moment before midnight. The instant before midnight. That's the absolutely true statement.

The problem with the way you understand it is clearly expressed in your statement, "The end point of one is the beginning point of the other." This is wrong. The end point of one is the point immediately _before_ the beginning point of the next. This is true for fractions of a second, whole seconds, whole minutes, whole hours, whole days, and so on. The last minute of the hour is not also the first minute of the next hour. The last day of the year is not also the first day of the next year. The last second of a minute is not also the first second of the next minute. And no matter how finely you slice it, whether by fractions, decimals, or an abstract concept like points or instants, the last one of one second and the first one of the next second are two separate points or instants. They are adjacent to each other.


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## Apatheticviews (Mar 21, 2010)

JJR512 said:


> The problem with the way you understand it is clearly expressed in your statement, "The end point of one is the beginning point of the other." This is wrong. The end point of one is the point immediately _before_ the beginning point of the next. This is true for fractions of a second, whole seconds, whole minutes, whole hours, whole days, and so on. The last minute of the hour is not also the first minute of the next hour. The last day of the year is not also the first day of the next year. The last second of a minute is not also the first second of the next minute. And no matter how finely you slice it, whether by fractions, decimals, or an abstract concept like points or instants, the last one of one second and the first one of the next second are two separate points or instants. They are adjacent to each other.


You again are using LENGTHS of time to describe a POINT in time. There is no "instant before" a point. There are an infinite number of fractionally smaller units before a POINT. Midnight is 0 (Zero Point) of a Time Cycle. It is neither Negative nor Positive. Midnight is not a LENGTH of time, but a TRANSITION POINT between two lengths of time.

Every day does indeed have TWO midnights. The problem is that since it is a POINT in Time, and not a LENGTH, you cannot divide it. It has no Integer value. You can't divide a Point. It's like trying to divide by 0, "undefined." 24:00:00 and 00:00:00 are both acceptable (by your own words, and by ISO). 24:00:01 however is not, because that is the first second of the next day. 24:00:00 is the FINAL second of the preceding day. These are LENGTHS (seconds). They have Integer values and are defined by the whole number which they are identified.

Using your yard stick example. Put an Orange on the end of each one, and stick them together. You now have a series of points connected by a series of lengths. If you cut each orange in half, you would end up with half an orange on each end of every yardstick (or half a POINT). Midnight exists like this. You're just choosing to push the orange farther down the stick in an attempt to prove your point. The problem is that it doesn't have any space.


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## JJR512 (May 18, 2010)

No, I was talking about points when I meant to be talking about points, and I was talking about lengths when I meant to be talking about lengths.

An instant is another way of describing a point in time. An instant has no length. A point has no size, as you say. People tend to think of points as being discreet, when in fact they are not. But it's easier for most people to understand them as discreet. In reality, saying a point can be divided into an infinite number of smaller points is kind of inaccurate; you can't divide something that has no size into smaller pieces.

You seem to understand that you can't divide a point, but you also say there are an "infinite number of fractionally smaller units" that come before a point. How can there be something smaller than something that has no size? It isn't important, though, because these are abstract concepts. But you are talking about an infinite number of smaller units before a point, and I said it doesn't matter how finely you slice it; the last one of that comes before the instant, or point, of midnight is the last instant, or point of time, of the previous point.

As you say, you can't divide a point. Unlike points, days are lengths, as you've also pointed out. They are discreet lengths of time. You cannot take a point and say it somehow manages to cover two different discreet lengths. It can be contained within one length, or the other, but not within both.

What you describe doing with a yardstick and oranges doesn't make any sense. You're talking about "half a point" after you've already correctly mentioned how you cannot divide a point. Now, this yardstick, being a length, has a defined beginning. Before the beginning, the yardstick does not exist. In terms of points, no matter how far you zoom in you will never see the beginning point, because points aren't actually real, but you will see there is a "point" where the yardstick begins. This point is the beginning of the yardstick. It is not also the end of the nothing, because then the yardstick and the nothing would be existing in the same space. This is not possible. The same is true for days, if you were to somehow pull a day out of the timeline and look at it as a discreet length, there is the point where it begins and before that is nothing. The first point of the day is not also the last point of the nothing, just as with the length of the yardstick.

In reality, we can't pull a day out of the timeline; in reality, the last day butts right up to the next day. The beginning point of one day cannot also be the end point of the previous. Days are discreet. A point in one cannot also be in another.

At this point in time (no pun intended), I am willing to do one of the following: 1. Continue to repeat myself for as long as you're willing to repeat yourself; or, 2. Realize that neither one of us is going to realize the other is going to understand how and why the other is wrong, and move on to other things.

Your choice.


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## Apatheticviews (Mar 21, 2010)

Midnight is like the wall between two rooms. It belongs to both. You can nail a picture to the wall from either side. That's what a point is in Geometry. Midnight = Middle of the Night = Middle Point. You can't say that one room doesn't have a wall just because its neighbor does. The room doesn't begin where the wall ends. It begins AT THE WALL. The wall is the shared point.

Draw a V. The bottom of a V is a POINT. It belongs to both lines that touch it. Make that V and X and the POINT where they cross is an intersection of two lines. Midnight is that intersection. If you rotate the two lines that make up a V to the point where they go opposite directions (180deg), they would still share that POINT. Clocks & Calendars are Geometric Constructs designed to Graphically Represent Time. 

If a line consists of three points (A, B, & C resp.), then it would be described as AC in the math world. It's two segments would be described as AB & BC. Two days are nothing more than a specific Length of Time (48 hours), broken into into two segments of 1 day each (24 hours). THe first day would be AB, and the second would be BC. They would share B (which for the purposes of this illustration is Midnight, but could be any specific time stamp).

You are arbitrarily assigning a point to one side or the other, which is not how geometry works. Timekeeping is nothing more than Geometry using 4 dimensional space.


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## JJR512 (May 18, 2010)

So you've chosen Option #1 then, hmm? Very well...

Your perception, or interpretation, is flawed. Two sequential days do not intersect each other. They abut each other. You can look at the vicinity of where they abut and zoom in ad infinitum, you will continue to see that one ends, then the other begins. There is a definite end of one, and a definite beginning of the other. Again, it's like two yardsticks that you've laid end-to-end. The first has a definite end, and the next has a definite beginning. No part of the second, no point of the second, overlaps, or is the same point as any part or point on the first one.

Any idea how many more times I'm going to have to say the same thing over again? Or you want to take another look at those two options I laid out at the end of my last post?


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## Earl of Ormonde (Sep 5, 2008)

JJR512 said:


> Any idea how many more times I'm going to have to say the same thing over again?


You can go one saying it till you're blue in the face, you'll still be wrong.

The time point called 0000 or midnight is the beginning and end of the day. It is both the exat point at which one 24 hour period ends and a new one starts. There is no intervening point between the end and the start.

Each day has two such points. Hence the confusion when 0000 or midnight is coupled to a date. Most of the world is aware of this. You apparently are not.

Those are the simple facts. So no matter how you want to cut it those will still be the facts.

Over and out!


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## Apatheticviews (Mar 21, 2010)

Earl of Ormonde said:


> You can go one saying it till you're blue in the face, you'll still be wrong.
> 
> The time point called 0000 or midnight is the beginning and end of the day. It is both the exat point at which one 24 hour period ends and a new one starts. There is no intervening point between the end and the start.
> 
> ...


Exactly such.


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## JJR512 (May 18, 2010)

Earl of Ormonde said:


> You can go one saying it till you're blue in the face, you'll still be wrong.


And this is what I've been saying to both of you for quite some time now.

I know what the simple facts are, and I'm sorry you can't comprehend them, but I'll be happy to repeat them as long as you want to keep it going.


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