24 hr clock in dialogue

[mountainsoul]

It's actually quite embarrassing how often you slip into 24 hour when talking to people that don't use it; fortunately for me most of my friends understand (both the system and my habits) but it's worse when you add "Z" or say "local" after every time.
We do this because some of our clocks are kept on GMT time (called "Zulu" time or "Z" - pronounced "Zed") and some are on local time (BST for example) called "local." Some of our clocks, in fact pretty much all of them, have the letter Z or L written on the clock face so you know what zone it's set on.
To further confuse things some time zones have their own designation so you might have a clock on Z, one on L and one on P time; it's weird hearing "aircraft due in a eleven thirty papa."

Further to the original question, for single digit hours people either use "oh" or "zero" depending on personal preference and it's not guaranteed to remain consistent. I know I usually refer to the shift start time as "oh-seven-fifteen" but I might call 5 am "oh-five-hundred" or "zero-five-hundred."

And 32 is definitely NOT old! 82 I'll start to accept as old but only just. (Yeah, that's the number of candles for me as well and I haven't even had a sub-life crisis yet, let alone a mid-life one!)

[Ulfgeir]

Here in Sweden you would get the 24-hour clock in writing (like on signs and notifications), but interchangeably using 12-hour-clock or 24-hour clock in speech (never using the equivalent of AM or PM). The useage of 24 hour clock in speech would be restricted mainly to full half hours. eg  16:30. For say 16:25 it would be said "five in half five" bu for 16:20 it would be "twenty past four"..

And btw, if you are setting your story in Europe, make certain you read upon the date-formats.  And yes there are differenes between the way you would write dates  in headers and freeform text. And for some stupid reason the best-before date on food is written in the form DD-MM-YY or sometimes even just DD-MM. Did I mention that there is nothing indicating this order on food-products themselves which is really really stupid. E.g. 10/05/11 could theoretically mean that it was 11th of May 2010, or 10th of May 2011 or 5ft of October 2011 or other strange combinations...

As a side note: The US system of writing things are probably the WORST way of doing it when it comes to sorting data on a computer. For written dates you want it in the YYYY-MM-DD form for sorting.

/Ulfgeir

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

The French use both methods interchangeably.

I'd say there's a slight preference for 24-hour clock in common usage in Montreal, but not by any means exclusively, in English, but I do not think I have ever heard anyone use am/pm talking French here.

In what I am writing right now, the main culture uses metric time with a ten-hour day.  They get the scale of confusion and mistakes you would expect when trying to cope with cultures using the older format.

[mountainsoul]

And btw, if you are setting your story in Europe, make certain you read upon the date-formats.  And yes there are differenes between the way you would write dates  in headers and freeform text. And for some stupid reason the best-before date on food is written in the form DD-MM-YY or sometimes even just DD-MM. Did I mention that there is nothing indicating this order on food-products themselves which is really really stupid. E.g. 10/05/11 could theoretically mean that it was 11th of May 2010, or 10th of May 2011 or 5ft of October 2011 or other strange combinations...

As a side note: The US system of writing things are probably the WORST way of doing it when it comes to sorting data on a computer. For written dates you want it in the YYYY-MM-DD form for sorting.

/Ulfgeir

reminds me of
from
http://www.xkcd.com/1179/

[Ulfgeir]

And here btw is a cool link that indicates lots of weird stuff regarding time...

Believed false thinga about time Found it at Slashdot.com when I was surfing at work earlier today... Some I will have to look up to verify.

/Ulfgeir

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

I'd say there's a slight preference for 24-hour clock in common usage in Montreal, but not by any means exclusively, in English, but I do not think I have ever heard anyone use am/pm talking French here.

This afternoon a weird old guy at a bus stop asking for the time proved me wrong on that last one.

Still, that's once in more than a decade.

[MClark]

okay, the dialogue in question is a police officer describing a series of criminal events, so I'll use something like zero three fifteen for 3:15 am.

I may still have people casually refer to am/pm, but only civilians during off hours.

Thanks for all the replies!

[Quantus]

For what its worth, Ive always hear it said as "oh-three fifteen" instead of "zero-three fifteen"