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4 reasons to use military time

If you can add and subtract 12, you can use military time.

Military time is so cool, and you should use it for these reasons:

  1. Reduced ambiguity regarding AM/PM. In most situations, it's easy enough to determine whether someone means AM or PM. For instance, if someone says "come over at 5", there is almost no question that they mean 5pm. But there are cases where military time helps. 12:00AM/12:00PM is notoriously confusing for most people—military time, if adopted, would eliminate any ambiguity. 00:00 means midnight, and 12:00 means noon.

  2. More efficiency. Representing a time in 12-hour format requires up to 7 variable characters: hh:mm:ss[A/P]. Representing a time in 24-hour (military time) format requires only 6 variable characters: hh:mm:ss.

  3. Calculating elapsed time is easier. Let's say it's 10:26pm on March 11, and you have to calculate what time it will be 16h from now. Just

    • convert 10:26pm into military time (22:26)
    • add 16:00 to 22:26 (22:26 + 16:00 = 38:26)
    • subtract 24:00 to find time on March 12 (38:26 - 24:00 = 14:26)
    • convert 14:26 back into 12-hour time (2:26pm)

    This is the easiest method even though it involves military time conversions.

  4. Midnight is great. It's satisfying to watch a clock hit 00:00 at midnight.

Why doesn't society[1], in general, use military time? Well, 12-hour time is so deeply ingrained in our daily lives that it's unlikely to change anytime soon. But you can change your own devices to military time in settings!

  1. at least in the US ↩︎