Talk:Comparison of the 12-hour and 24-hour clocks

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Contents

[edit] Removed entries

I'm retaining these (not all the removed ones, but some that were borderline etc) on the talk page on the off chance that it turns out there's a good reason to include them. --Random832 04:58, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

  • In terms of pronunciation, a specific 24-hour notation time such as "19:59", said as "nineteen fifty-nine", may sound too similar to and be mistaken as the calendar year 1959. While the years 2000 through 2009 and the last forty years in each century are exempt from such confusion, it does exist for the others.
  • Clocks with a chime universally chime between hours 1 to 12, but deviate in approach for hour 0 and hours 13 to 23. While it is not possible to chime zero times, clocks may in fact chime at the end of 23:59 and again at 1:00.

I removed this entry on the basis that it is not an adavantage for the 12-hour clock. It is an advantage for using either the 12-hour clock or the 24-hour clock over using both clocks. --Marfresbo 20:46, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

  • In written English, there is no conventional notation for indicating that a time uses the 24-hour clock (other than the absence of an am/pm suffix). Therefore, a 24-hour time between 1:00 and 12:59 might be considered ambiguous by some readers.

[edit] TODO

could probably use a paragraph of prose at the top summarizing the issues. In the long term, the lists could probably be converted to prose. --Random832 06:15, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Well, there's been some progress

Some issues:

  • In written English, there is no conventional notation for indicating that a time uses the 24-hour clock (other than the absence of an am/pm suffix). Therefore, a 24-hour time between 1:00 and 12:59 might be considered ambiguous by some readers.
    • Was removed, while this is mentioned in the lead paragraph, I think it should be an item in the list too. It's an advantage of the 12-hour clock because, with the 12-hour clock, you see a time written with no other context and you know what time it is, even if you normally use the 24-hour clock. When there are multiple systems, a system that provides a way to clearly identify it is being used _does_ have an advantage of one that does not - imagine if there were no abbreviation for "kilometre", and you weren't allowed to use the word in full - in other words, if the only accepted way to identify distances in kilometres were a bare number - the existence of the abbreviation "mi" would then be an advantage of the US system over the metric system.
  • Clocks with a chime universally chime between hours 1 to 12, but deviate in approach for hour 0 and hours 13 to 23. While it is not possible to chime zero times, clocks may in fact chime at the end of 23:59 and again at 1:00.
    • Unless it can be shown that striking clocks have ever been made for the 24-hour system (analog ones are rare enough, and none of them seem to have chimes), I don't think this entry has any merit.
  • The rarely used system of using 0:00 instead of 12:00 and A:00 and B:00 for 10 and 11 respectfully solves many of the "problems" of both systems.
    • I've removed this, it's so "out there" that it definitely needs a source that this "rarely used system" even exists.

The article has, though, seen a lot of improvement - the one about 6:00 at sunrise and sunset is a bit unwieldy though --Random832 15:50, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Move to "Contrast of the 12-hour and 24-hour clocks"

Comparison means showing similarities. This article lists no similarities only differences. Therefore, recommend moving the Article to Contrast of the 12-hour and 24-hour clocks. Zginder 13:40, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Two midnights wording

The wording of the advantage of the 12-hour clock not having two midnights has become a matter of debate.

The current wording written by Woodstone is:

The practice, used with the 24-hour system, to indicate midnight at the end of a date by 24:00, in addition to the notation 00:00 for the start of the next day, creates two different notations for the same instant. The 12-hour system as used in practice has only one notation for each instant.

The wording that I support is:

The practice, stated for use with the 24-hour system in ISO 8601, of using 00:00 to indicate midnight at the start of the day and 24:00 at the end of the day violates the one-to-one principle of there being one and only one notation for each moment in time. The 12-hour notation does not be violate this principle.

The point as Markus Kuhn wrote it is:

The practice, occasionally used with the 24-hour system when expressing time intervals, of using 24:00 to indicate midnight at the end of a date, in addition to the normal 0:00 notation for midnight at the start of the day, creates two different notations for one moment in time. The 12-hour notation cannot be used this way.

The wording of the two that I did not write sound more like an advantage to the 24-hour clock then the 12-hour clock, as such I believe that my wording is best. Zginder 19:50, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Even in a section describing (dis)advantages, a neutral point of view is of importance. It is best to just give the facts and leave it up to the reader to decide how important a (dis)advantage is. Speaking of "violating principles" can hardly be considered an NPOV statement. −Woodstone 20:47, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
Is the problem solely the words "violate" and "principles," because they can be weakened. Zginder 21:31, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
Those are the most blatantly POV words. I tried to reformulate to avoid them and make the statement of facts in the most neutral way. −Woodstone 23:14, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sunset and sunrise around 6 AM/PM?

I think this can be counted as regionalism. Where I live, the sun sets anywhere between 9 PM Standard and 4 PM standard and the sun rises anywhere around 3:30 AM standard and 7 AM standard. And then let's not account for Alaska, Siberia, Scandinavia, Iceland, Canada and other regions and countries where the sun sometimes doesn't even set for days.

ColdRedRain (talk) 23:20, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Hence "disregarding civil time (including DST) in favor of apparent solar time": so, on average (over the days of the year, within time zones, ...), sunrise is at 6 AM and sunset at 6 PM. Those are the centerpoints from which other sunrise/sunset times deviate. -- Vystrix Nexoth (talk) 07:09, 9 March 2008 (UTC)