Ask HN: What does 12:00 AM mean?
Okay, I&#x27;m genuinely confused now, can someone please explain this to me?<p>First of all, how is nobody taking about the fact that OP was scheduled                                             
for an exam that takes place... at midnight.<p>There are two possible cases here.<p>Some people are alleging that OP lives in the same place as the exam  
takes place -- which is not clear to me from the information available  
-- and use this as an excuse for saying &quot;OP should adopt to local       
customs&quot;.<p>But that would imply the exam takes place on midnight in local time. Is     
that actually a thing? Like, is this normal? Why on earth would anyone  
assume that&#x27;s the case in an ambiguous situation like this, I can see why 
you would assume it&#x27;s at noon without giving it too much thought.<p>The second case is that OP not in the same place (e.g. the given time at
midnight does not match OP&#x27;s local time), but in this case I blame the  
institution for allowing people to attend exams remotely while not      
properly accommodating for time differences.<p>While 12:00 AM&#x2F;PM may be technically valid time descriptions, I was     
under the impression that it was common (in places that use the 12 hour                       
system) to instead write 12:00 noon&#x2F;midnight specifically to avoid this.<p>From what I understand, Americans are confused by this too, so why are people so eager to blame Europeans, rather than the system?<p>Second, I don&#x27;t understand people saying they use 11:59&#x2F;12:01 AM&#x2F;PM as a
mnemonic. This makes no sense to me as 00:01 a valid time. How do the   
above times resolve anything, when all you do is increase&#x2F;decrease the  
time, relative to the label, which is what makes it confusing in the    
first place.<p>I don&#x27;t understand how I&#x27;m supposed to know which of AM&#x2F;PM 00:01 refers
to, unless I already know what AM&#x2F;PM means.<p>Third, people making comparisons to reading an analog clock. When I read
an analog clock, I get a time in a 12 hour window. Fair enough. But when
I then translate it to 24h, what I do is use my knowledge of whether it
is currently day or night to translate it. Which has nothing to do with
memorizing which label is which. Analog clocks don&#x27;t have AM&#x2F;PM labels  
so how would this make any more sense?