12 am is AM or PM in English?

When talking about time, we usually calculate it according to a 12-hour or 24-hour system. To clearly distinguish between the hours of morning and afternoon, people often use the 24-hour system or use two symbols AM and PM in English.

• AM (Ante Meridiem = Before midday): Before 12 noon (before 1/2 day).
• PM (Post Meridiem = After midda): After 12 noon (after half a day).

So, when you want to say the time of 12 noon in English, will people use AM or PM?

From the above definition, we can clearly see that noon and PM are at noon. But the 12-hour mark in a day is also considered to be 0 hours, the starting time of time.

Therefore, 12:00 noon will be understood as 00:00 PM (daytime), the start time of the afternoon. Meanwhile, 12:00 pm or 24:00 is interpreted as 00:00 AM, the start date of a new day.

To better understand how to use AM and PM symbols when it comes to timelines in English, you can refer to the following time format table:

Time format 12 hours 24 hours 12:00 (midnight) at 12pm

0:00 (start date)

or

24:00 (end of day)

12:01 AM 0:01 1:00 AM 1:00 2:00 AM 2:00 3:00 AM 3:00 4:00 AM 4:00 5:00 AM 5:00 6:00 AM 6:00 7 : 00 AM 7:00 8:00 AM 8:00 9:00 AM 9:00 10:00 AM 10:00 11:00 AM 11:00 12:00 PM or 12:00 PM (starting afternoon) 12: 00 12:01 PM 12:01 1:00 PM 13:00 2:00 PM 14:00 3:00 PM 15:00 4:00 PM 16:00 5:00 PM 17:00 6:00 PM 18:00 7:00 PM 19:00 8:00 PM 20:00 9:00 PM 21:00 10:00 PM 22:00 11:00 PM 23:00

For simplicity, you can understand that:

AM: Use with the morning time, starting from 00:00 to 12:00.

PM: Use with the afternoon time, starting from 12:00:01 to 23:59:59.