When is midnight sunday

Evening is typically the hours between pm and pm. Night is generally any hours that the sun is not above the horizon. Morning is the period from sunrise to noon. However, morning strictly ends at noon, which is when afternoon starts. Noon is at PM. Evening is from PM to 8 PM, or around sunset. Night is from sunset to sunrise, so from PM until AM.

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Red tape, white lies. Speculative science. This sceptred isle. Root of all evil. Ethical conundrums. This sporting life. Stage and screen. Birds and the bees. The real question is: what is mid-day? John Hawthorne, Crawley, W Sussex. One must recognise the difference between points in time and periods of time. Midnight is the zero point in time when we start to build up 24 one-hour periods of time to make up a new day.

So midnight is the point 0am. After a period of one hour we reach the point in time called 1am, and after 12 periods of one hour we reach the point called noon. At noon the 13th one-hour period starts, ending at point 1pm. This process continues up to the point 11pm when the 24th period of one hour starts.

This period ends in the middle of the night, 12 hours after noon at the point midnight or 12pm. Geoff Berriman, Sandal, Wakefield. Working on the hour clock meant that there was no difficulty with midday - hours - but the Air Force could not countenance hours for midnight. We were instructed that the Air Force day began at hours and ended at hours. The two minutes between were ours to use as we liked.

AS IS clear from consideration of the literal meanings of am and pm, noon is 12m, while 12am and 12pm have equal claims on midnight. We tend to avoid 12m nowadays from fear that someone may think m stands for midnight, but in avoiding this confusion we have been thrown into worse confusion by trying to determine which of 12am and 12pm to assign to noon and midnight. As it is dark then, I've always supposed it is midnight.

Denis Buckley, Darwin, Australia. But one minute after midnight Some examples: "Midnight on the 10th of December" "Midnight Thursday" "Midnight tonight" are usually interpreted as: Straddling the 10th and the 11th of December Straddling Thursday and Friday Straddling today and tomorrow but should they technically mean: straddling the 9th and the 10th of December?

This is much less clear. Technically is there a midnight "tonight", or is midnight "tomorrow morning"? What do you think? How should "midnight" be interpreted? Improve this question. Laurel Damovisa Damovisa 2 2 gold badges 5 5 silver badges 8 8 bronze badges. That's why deadlines are usually pm — Unrelated. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Henry Henry 3, 21 21 silver badges 22 22 bronze badges. As a programmer, I deliberately avoid the ambiguity as well.

Thank you so much Damovisa. I'm actually sitting right now trying to fix ambiguous period description in the app that I'm working on and "By the end of the 10th" is a perfect way to be unambiguous.

Friday night at midnight probably will always be interpreted as "Midnight in the night which follows Friday evening".

Midnight tonight This means to me the midnight following today. Community Bot 1. I think this summarises what I'm getting out of these answers. Technically, "midnight" doesn't belong to either day, but conventionally it's usually understood at the end of a day not the beginning. Note that leap seconds , when they occur, typically are inserted at UTC. Eg, there was one a month ago, at 30 June , UTC. At that midnight, and were 2 seconds apart instead of 1. With local time, that extra second may be in the morning or afternoon, not near local midnight - unless your timezone matches UTC.

The convention stems from the term itself. Midnight comes from 'mid-night. Example: The paper is due by Friday at midnight. Example: We stayed out Friday night until 3am! We were out until 3am Saturday morning! MrWonderful MrWonderful 1, 5 5 silver badges 14 14 bronze badges. This is a good answer, but experience shows that you're wrong -- it can be confusing, and to many people. Stamping your feet about how illogical and unthinking humans are doesn't change that fact You may disable these by changing your browser settings, but this may affect how the website functions.

We utilise Google Analytics cookies to help us to improve our website by collecting information on how it's used. The cookies collect information in a way that does not directly identify anyone. There is no confusion when using the words 12 noon or midday and 12 midnight, although the use of 12 midnight can raise the questions Is midnight today or tomorrow? What does midnight mean? To avoid confusion, it is always better to use the hour clock, so that is 12 noon. Therefore Sunday or Monday are both midnight meaning Sunday to Monday.

It is common for transport timetables to use Sunday or Monday, or pm or am, to further reduce confusion. There are no standards established for the meaning of 12am and 12pm. It is often said that 12am Monday is midnight on Monday morning and 12pm is midday.