12 pm

Geoff1963

The people who "run" time say 12 am and 12 pm are ambiguous, so shouldn't be used.
http://www.npl.co.uk/reference/faqs/is-midnight-12-am-or-12-pm-faq-time

I fell foul of a bank texting to want money in my account by "12pm" ; and bouncing a Direct Debit because I paid it in at 4pm, even though 4 is 8 less than 12. I suggested they use 12 noon, but I don't think they've changed it.

sleepyjones

I've wondered this many times when posting comps ad never really knew so I would always just put "noon"

It's not as stupid a question as you might think

jamielmdjs

While they are ambiguous and shouldn't be used, in almost all scenarios of use 12pm is meaning midday, 12am is meaning midnight.

As far as end dating for comping is concerned, the real trouble centres around 12am (or midnight) expiry times.

Does an expiry of say, Midnight or 12am Monday mean the very last second of Sunday, or the very last second of Monday.

As an end dater, i've found it's a pretty even spread between these 2 scenarios (sometimes trying to enter a midnight expiry on the day, thinking it was expiring at the end of the day only to find it expired at the end of the previous day.) I usually try to ensure i have done the midnight ones a day or 2 early to be sure.

alanq

ISO 8601 solves the issue of having two midnights in a day by designating the one at the start of the day 00:00 and the one at the end as 24:00. I don't recall having seen that convention ever used.

One-Eye

Another pet hate of mine are comps that give closing dates such as:

Competition open until midnight GMT on Friday 4th August.

In the UK on 4th August, midnight GMT is actually 1am

... so does this comp end at 0100 04/08, 2359 04/08 or 0100 05/08

Didoow

hdh74 wrote: »

I usually assume it's midnight since that seems a logical time to end a comp but found one had closed recently when I went to enter it in the afternnon. :undecided

that will be because midnight is technically the first minute of the day (if you look at the time on the device you're using it will say 23:59 then go to 00:00 with the following day's date) although some comps use the last, using 23:59 would be much better for an end time as it would avoid all doubt!
In answer to the original question, 12pm is noon as it wouldn't be 12 am at noon then 12:01pm a minute later