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The 12-hour clock is a time convention in which the 24 hours of the day are divided into two periods: a.m. (from Latin ante meridiem, translating to "before midday") and p.m. (from Latin post meridiem, translating to "after midday").
Where the a.m.–p.m. convention is inconvenient typographically (e.g., in dense tables), different fonts or colors are sometimes used instead. The most common usage in transport timetables for air, rail, bus, etc. is to use lightface for a.m. times and boldface for p.m. times. It is also not uncommon for AM and PM to be shortened to A and P.
The AM/PM system actually does have a specific abbreviation for noon—just the letter “M,” short for “meridiem,” which would come after “12” and only refer to noon. Haven’t heard of it?
Punctuation and spacing styles differ, even within English-speaking countries (6:30 p.m., 6:30 pm, 6:30 PM, 6.30pm, etc.). [ citation needed ] Most people who live in countries that use one of the clocks dominantly are still able to understand both systems without much confusion; the statements "three o'clock" and "15:00", for example, are ...
When the time is expressed in the HH:MM:SS notation, the Roman ante/post-meridiem indicators (AM and PM) are also used frequently. In addition, they sometimes follow the convention of writing the Korean-style indicator before the time; it is not uncommon to encounter times expressed in such a way, e.g., “ AM 9:18 ” instead of “ 9:18 AM ”.
Date and time notation in the United Kingdom records the date using the day–month–year format (31 December 1999, 31/12/99 or 31/12/1999). The time can be written using either the 24-hour clock (23:59) or the 12-hour clock (11:59 p.m.), either with a colon or a full stop (11.59 p.m.).
The legal and cultural expectations for date and time representation vary between countries, and it is important to be aware of the forms of all-numeric calendar dates used in a particular country to know what date is intended.
The date and time in Australia are most commonly recorded using the day–month–year format (25 February 2025) and the 12-hour clock (2:49 pm), although 24-hour time is used in some cases. For example, some public transport operators such as V/Line [ 1 ] and Transport NSW [ 2 ] use 24-hour time, although others use 12-hour time instead.