Is 12 noon pm or am? I always get confused. Who would be the best person to help me out? None other than the people at AM/PM gas stations.
Here is a series of letters I have written for AMPM where we get to the bottom of the matter of fixing this noon pm/am thing.
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Dear AMPM,
I always get confused if 12 noon is am or pm. Which one is it?
The time traveling confused,
matt
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Dear AMPM,
I never understood why 12 noon is pm. If you count continuously through the day shouldn’t 12 be pm? Let’s take a look. 1am, 2am, 3am, 4am, 5am, 6am, 7am, 8am, 9am, 10am, 11am, 12am, 1pm, 2pm… Doesn’t that make more sense?
Let’s not work against time. Why would all of the sudden 12 noon become a pm? It should follow in line with the other numbers and be a pm.
At one time,
matt
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Dear AMPM,
I think I have a solution to this 12 noon being pm thing. We already established in my previous message that it doesn’t make sense for 12 to be pm.
But the argument goes that 12 noon is the halfway point of the day, so therefore it should be pm. Ok. That makes sense. But then it doesn’t make sense why it’s 12. If we are declaring that it’s the start of the half day, why do we continue calling it 12? It should just be zero.
Since you are the owner of the AM/PM, from now one, I would like you to declare that 12pm noon is now 0pm noon. So when it’s 12:26pm, it would be 0:26pm. That would make so much more sense.
Thank you for implementing this change.
Let’s time this perfectly.
matt
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I sent AM/PM the second email. I hope they respond. You’d think the keepers of time would get back to you in a timely manner.
This is a vital issue. Without knowing if it’s a.m. or p.m. how canl we know when it’s time to Stop’n’Go, Pak & Pak, Get n Go, Loaf’n Jug or Kum & Go? If things get really mixed up, we might end up with a Golden Gallon!
I don’t think you’re putting your back into this Matt. Forget the e-mails — take a video camera into the store and confront the clerks directly. Show them you’re not kidding around.
While typing this comment, I accidentally typed “cute danger music.” Not quite the same thing.
AM/PM has still not responded to my first two emails. TIME TO UNLEASH EMAIL LEVEL NUMBER THREE! +cue danger music+.
Leslie Kuo no but 12.01 IS 1 minute past midday 😉
I think perhaps it’s time to have a little chat with your brain 😉
Claire, that makes sense. My problem is that I think of 12 as in consecutive of 10 and 11, which are am. Thus my brain wants to make 12 noon into am.
pm
I always remember pm=past midday- so… anything after 12noon- as in 12.01 would be pm..