Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/116487
Manliness The Art of By Brett & Kate McKay, courtesy of www.artofmanliess.com How to Tell Time Like A Soldier H aving not served in the Armed Forces, I was always thrown for a loop whenever someone would randomly bust out military time. I didn't have problems with morning times — those are easy to figure out. 0800. Yeah, I got it. 8:00am. It was when someone gave me a time that was in the afternoon or evening that I had trouble. I knew I had to add or subtract 12 to convert military time to standard time, I just never knew which one was the correct option in that moment. Consequently, I would stand there in silence, furrowing my eyebrows, trying to make the conversion as quickly as I could so I didn't look like an idiot. I always looked like an idiot. Tired of feeling like a civilian chucklehead, I decided once and for all to learn how to convert military time to standard time quickly and easily. Here's how to do it. JOBS for TEAMS Understanding the 12-Hour and 24-Hour Time Systems | There are two main systems for telling time: the 12-hour and the 24-hour. In North America, civilians use the 12-hour clock in which the day is divided into two sections: the 12 hours from midnight to noon (ante meridiem — a.m.), and the 12 hours from noon to midnight 30 JobsForTeams0413_manliness.indd 1 (post meridiem — p.m.). Under the 24hour clock system, the hours of the day run 0-23, midnight to midnight. Midnight is 00:00 and the last minute of the day is 23:59. Midnight is also sometimes rendered as 24:00 to indicate the end of the day. So for example, you would say that Thursday ends at 24:00 tonight, and Friday begins at 00:00. When you compare the two systems, the 12-hour clock has its disadvantages. It can cause confusion over whether a time given is in the am or pm, and whether 12:00 is midnight or noon. It's also easier to calculate the duration of something using the 24-hour clock. For example, you can more quickly figure out that something lasts for five hours if you know it runs from 10:30 to 15:30, rather than being told that it ran from 10:30am to 3:30pm. For these reasons, the 24-hour clock is popular around the world, and was adopted first by the US Navy in 1920, and then by the Army in 1942, during WWII. While the 24-hour clock is the international standard for time-telling, because of the rarity of its use in North America outside of the Armed Forces (and some www.jobsforteams.com 3/5/13 1:48 PM