Re: Support for a and p suffix for morning/afternoon scheduling

["Peter Neilson" <neilson@windstream.net>]

On Fri, 25 May 2012 01:45:14 -0400, Tom <adatgyujto@gmail.com> wrote:

> I use the scheduling prompt very often and I usually
> give times in 8pm/9am/etc. format, because they are conveniently
> short to type.
>
> Today it occured to me the m is unnecessary, because a and p already
> gives the necessary info.
>
> Could we also support 8a and 9p format for times like 8am and 9pm,
> so that the m does not have to be typed when scheduling?
> It's unambiguous, this form is not used for other things AFAIK, so we
> could easily support this shorter form too.

Here is a pedantic excursion through the ambiguity of time...

12a and 12p are ambiguous, as are 12am and 12pm. Which is noon, and which  
is midnight? Standards differ. I generally favor, in English, the  
unambiguous use of noon and midnight, or 12 noon and 12 midnight.  
Unfortunately those terms do not fit into a scenario of abbreviation.  
Furthermore, midnight itself is ambiguous unless rendered as 0000 or 2400.  
Does "midnight Thursday" refer to the start of Thursday, or to its end?

See this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight

One might suggest 12n for noon and 12m for midnight, but this conflicts  
madly with prior use of abbreviations borrowed from Latin, where 12m is  
meridies (noon) and 12n is noctis (midnight). 12m, noon, is the origin of  
the "m" in "am" and "pm" : ante meridiem, post meridiem, for before noon  
and after noon.

We probably have little choice but to adopt the obvious standard, "look at  
your digital clock," in which (contrary to some published standards) 12:00  
AM is midnight and 12:00 PM is noon.