The 24-Hour Military Time System

We use military time to ensure brevity and accuracy when talking about times. For example, conveying a specific time over the radio may cause the receiving party to misunderstand or not hear clearly whether person speaking says “AM” or “PM”. Military time removes this ambiguity — “0800,” or zero eight hundred hours, requires no clarification and can only represent a single point on the 24-hour cycle. Military time is a timekeeping method that follows the 24-hour clock. The day begins at midnight with 0000 hours with military time and ends with 2359. First of all, remember that the military clock runs from 0000 (zero-zero-zero-zero hours) to 2359 (twenty-three hundred fifty-nine hours). To tell the hour, you need to read in hundreds rather than thousands. For instance, zero nine hundred is how you read 9 AM, and twenty-one hundred is how you read 9 PM. For more examples, check the military time converter. Although it is often used as a synonym for the 24-hour clock, and the two are closely related, they are not the same.