--- title: Morning, afternoon and the 24-hour clock — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Morning, afternoon and the 24-hour clock», a lesson of the world course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: A day has 24 hours, but an ordinary clock face shows only 12, so its short hand goes round twice a day: once from midnight to midda --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/103-morning-afternoon-24-hour-clock/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [World](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/) / Morning, afternoon and the 24-hour clock # Morning, afternoon and the 24-hour clock Lesson 103 of the world course of Mova's primary school: 23 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/world/103-morning-afternoon-24-hour-clock/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/103-morning-afternoon-24-hour-clock/0/) — A day has 24 hours, but an ordinary clock face shows only 12, so its short hand goes round twice a day: once from midnight to midday, and once from midday to midnight. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/103-morning-afternoon-24-hour-clock/1/) — To say which half you mean, people add "am" (before midday, from Latin "ante meridiem") or "pm" (after midday, "post meridiem"). - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/103-morning-afternoon-24-hour-clock/2/) — Pick the wrong one and your 7:00 alarm rings at 7 in the evening, twelve hours off. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/103-morning-afternoon-24-hour-clock/3/) — "You picked pm, ya numpty!" ("numpty" is Scottish for a silly person). - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/103-morning-afternoon-24-hour-clock/4/) — The 24-hour clock gets rid of am and pm: it counts the hours from 00 at midnight up to 23 late at night. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/103-morning-afternoon-24-hour-clock/5/) — Trains, planes, TV guides, cinemas and much of Europe use it. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/103-morning-afternoon-24-hour-clock/6/) — For any hour over 12, take away 12 to get the pm time: 15:30 is 3:30 pm, 20:00 is 8 pm. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/103-morning-afternoon-24-hour-clock/7/) — Small numbers like 01:00 to 05:00 are the middle of the night; numbers from 13 to 23 are afternoon and evening. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/103-morning-afternoon-24-hour-clock/8/) — Armies and pilots read 06:00 as "oh six hundred", which in a film just means 6 in the morning. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/103-morning-afternoon-24-hour-clock/9/) — When something runs across midnight, like a night shift from 22:00 to 06:00, split it in two: 2 hours up to midnight plus 6 hours after it makes 8 hours. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/103-morning-afternoon-24-hour-clock/10/) — An ordinary clock face shows 12 hours, so the hands go round twice in one day of 24 hours. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/103-morning-afternoon-24-hour-clock/11/) — "am" means before midday and "pm" means after midday; 7:00 am and 7:00 pm are 12 hours apart. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/103-morning-afternoon-24-hour-clock/12/) — The 24-hour clock counts hours from 00 at midnight to 23 at night, so it needs no am or pm. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/103-morning-afternoon-24-hour-clock/13/) — To change a 24-hour time over 12 into pm time, take away 12: 15:30 is 3:30 pm and 20:00 is 8:00 pm. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/103-morning-afternoon-24-hour-clock/14/) — Noon, or midday, is 12:00 on the 24-hour clock, and midnight is 00:00. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/103-morning-afternoon-24-hour-clock/15/) — Many people say 12 am for midnight and 12 pm for noon, but these muddle even grown-ups, so timetables often just write "noon" and "midnight". - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/103-morning-afternoon-24-hour-clock/16/) — On the 24-hour clock, times from 13:00 to 23:59 are always afternoon or evening, so 13:45 is 1:45 pm. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/103-morning-afternoon-24-hour-clock/17/) — Armies, ships and pilots say 24-hour times as "hundred hours": 0600 is "oh six hundred", 6 am, and 1400 is "fourteen hundred", 2 pm. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/103-morning-afternoon-24-hour-clock/18/) — A night shift from 22:00 to 06:00 lasts 8 hours: 2 hours up to midnight and 6 hours after it. - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/103-morning-afternoon-24-hour-clock/19/) — After a power cut, oven and microwave clocks often reset, and if the am or pm is set wrong the clock is 12 hours out. - [20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/103-morning-afternoon-24-hour-clock/20/) — Timetables are exact to the minute: a bus at 07:52 leaves 8 minutes before 8, so rounding it to "eight-ish" makes you miss it. - [21](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/103-morning-afternoon-24-hour-clock/21/) — In France and much of Europe people say the 24-hour time in everyday talk: "dix-neuf heures" is 19:00, which is 7 pm. - [22](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/103-morning-afternoon-24-hour-clock/22/) — Words people use: "-ish" means roughly ("eight-ish" is about 8), "half eight" is 8:30 in Britain, and "graveyard shift" is slang for a very late night shift. - ← previous: [Quarter past, quarter to, and how people really say the time](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/102-quarter-past-quarter-to-saying-the-time/) - next →: [Timetables: buses, trains, TV and the school day](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/104-timetables-buses-trains-school-day/) - ↑ back to [World](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/)