AM & PM

AM

• AM stands for Latin phrase ante meridiem, meaning before noon.
  • It refers to the time before noon but after midnight.
  • You might have breakfast in the morning at 8:00ᴀᴍ.

PM

• PM stands for Latin phrase post meridiem, meaning after noon.
  • It refers to the time after noon but before midnight.
  • The latest sunset in Fort Collins, Colorado, near the summer solstice, is about 8:35ᴘᴍ MT.

Current time

The current Colorado time is 6:20PM. It’s PM, because noon was 6.342 hours ago.

Noon & midnight

• Long, enjoyable, fruitless arguments can be had debating whether noon & midnight are AM, PM, neither, or both (noon is neither, midnight is both). Whatever you decide, many people will hold the other point of view, and so will misunderstand you. You can’t fix them.
• Sensible people will avoid those times, and instead refer to nearby times such as 12:01ᴘᴍ (just after noon) or 11:59ᴘᴍ (just before midnight).
• If you must refer to those exact times:
  • Use “noon” to refer to the middle of the day. It is neither AM (before noon) or PM (after noon). It is simply “noon”.
  • Midnight is harder. Some people will interpret “midnight Thursday” to mean the Wednesday/Thursday border, whereas others will interpret it to mean the Thursday/Friday border. You could say “midnight at the end of Thursday”, I suppose.

24-hour time

• 24-hour time makes more sense than any of this.
• The current Colorado time is 18:20. Simple, eh?