A stylish hour analogue clock that will make a statement on any wall, with its bold monochrome face, and matte black metal casing Visit the Royal Observatory. Plan your visit. Plan your visit to the Royal Observatory. Top things to do. From historic clocks and telescopes to cutting edge astronomy, find all there is to see at the home of Greenwich Mean Time.
Visit Us. Search Want to search our collection? Search here. We use cookies to ensure you have the best browsing experience and to help us improve our website. Find out more Accept Cookies. Close cookie banner. Subsequently, AM and PM remain to be a common and yet ambiguous tradition of how people refer to time. The tradition to measure time with a hour standard has been effective since ancient times. In particular, people were able to measure time only using the sun.
Therefore, with the help of sundial clocks, ancient people were able to identify time only during a particular period of the day. Eventually, the decision to divide a day into two cycles which lasts 12 hours was influenced by the fact that the moon also had 12 cycles.
One of the most common ambiguities of AM and PM was the confusion regarding the start of a day. Namely, it is difficult to determine the starting point of the day cycle. To avoid the confusion regarding denomination of noon and midnight, the convention refers to 12 AM as midnight and to 12 PM as noon. Although technically, midnight implies AM, the lack of clarifications regarding whether it is PM or AM might be misleading and ambiguous.
Despite the ambiguity of the hour time convention, it is used in many countries. Namely, this tradition is peculiar to the English speaking states and territories which were part of the British Empire. The following countries utilize the hour clock to denominate time:. The most common argument in favor of using the hour convention is easy pronunciation.
It is easier to say 6 PM rather than 18 hours. Hence, the use of AM and PM is more of a convenience decision. Another confusing notion about the use of AM and PM is to understand how to properly write it.
Different style guides suggest different types of writing the abbreviation. Also, the use of the period between the letters A. The lack of consistent rules among all style guides is the primary factor why people could face the issue of how to write the time appropriately.
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