Page 57 - Perfect English Grammar: The Indispensable Guide to Excellent Writing and Speaking

It’s usually clearer to use midnight and noon instead of 12:00 a.m. and 12:00
p.m.

Even with the dominance of digital clocks, which have no spinning second,
minute, or hour hands, we still keep using the old ways of talking about time

derived from clocks with dials and faces.
One old-fashioned way of telling time that has hung on for almost 500 years

is o’clock, a contraction of of the clock. It is used only when the time is exactly

on the hour.

■ ■ 9 a.m. = 9 o’clock in the morning 11:00 p.m. = 11 o’clock at night We
don’t use o’clock if there are minutes after the hour in the time.

■ Wrong: 9:10 o’clock The halfway mark in an hour also has its own
terminology.

■ 7:30 = “seven-thirty” = “half past seven” = “half seven” (mostly in the
UK) We also use quarter-hours in English time-telling, especially when

estimating time. A quarter hour is 15 minutes, which is one-quarter of the
hour’s 60 minutes.

■ 9:15 = “nine fifteen” = “a quarter past nine”
■ 10:45 = “a quarter before eleven” = “a quarter to eleven” = “a quarter

of eleven”

■ For all other times, we use similar constructions: 2:55 = “two fifty-five” =

“five minutes before three” = “five minutes to three” = “five of three”
Since we often give approximate times in English, sometimes we want to

emphasize that we are talking about very specific times.

■ The meeting starts at 3 p.m. on the dot.

■ You’ll miss the train if you’re not there at 6:20 sharp.

Time can be both a non-count noun and a count noun (see section 8.4).