Ken Pizzini <tz.@explicate.org> writes:
On Sun, Apr 23, 2006 at 12:14:36AM -0700, Paul Eggert wrote:
I once had a printed airline ticket that said I left LAX at "1200N", meaning noon.
Even worse, I've seen legislative hearings that were scheduled for "12:00 M". The "M" here means... no, not midnight, but meridian --- i.e., noon!
Yes, that is a dreadful ambiguity. I hope US airlines don't use "1200M" for midnight, though, as that would be ambiguous as to date. A Latin-language nit, though: "M" means "meridies", not "meridian". "Meridies" was an irregularly formed Latin word: it meant "midday" and came from "medius" mid + "dies" day, which were originally combined into "medidies", but the Romans eventually changed the first D to an R. Postea quinta littera sublata, et subrogata r dicta est laurus, ut in auriculis que in inicio audicule dicte sunt, et medidies qui nunc meridies dicitur. ("Later the letter D was removed and replaced by R, so that it was called laurus, as in the words auricule, which was originally audicule, and medidies, now called meridies.") -- Aberdeen Bestiary entry for "laurel" (circa 1200) <http://www.abdn.ac.uk/bestiary/translat/78v.hti> This just goes to show you that the problem with what exactly to call "noon" and "midnight" goes back _millennia_. I agree with Markus Kuhn that "00:00", "12:00", and (let's hope rarely) "24:00" are the best ways to attack the problem nowadays.