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Type a time in either box. The chart below covers every hour and prints on one page.
Every hour, with how each one is said out loud. No “hours” on the end, for the reason in the next section.
| Military | Standard | Said out loud |
|---|---|---|
| 0100 | 1:00 AM | zero one hundred |
| 0200 | 2:00 AM | zero two hundred |
| 0300 | 3:00 AM | zero three hundred |
| 0400 | 4:00 AM | zero four hundred |
| 0500 | 5:00 AM | zero five hundred |
| 0600 | 6:00 AM | zero six hundred |
| 0700 | 7:00 AM | zero seven hundred |
| 0800 | 8:00 AM | zero eight hundred |
| 0900 | 9:00 AM | zero nine hundred |
| 1000 | 10:00 AM | ten hundred |
| 1100 | 11:00 AM | eleven hundred |
| 1200 | 12:00 PM | twelve hundred |
| 1300 | 1:00 PM | thirteen hundred |
| 1400 | 2:00 PM | fourteen hundred |
| 1500 | 3:00 PM | fifteen hundred |
| 1600 | 4:00 PM | sixteen hundred |
| 1700 | 5:00 PM | seventeen hundred |
| 1800 | 6:00 PM | eighteen hundred |
| 1900 | 7:00 PM | nineteen hundred |
| 2000 | 8:00 PM | twenty hundred |
| 2100 | 9:00 PM | twenty one hundred |
| 2200 | 10:00 PM | twenty two hundred |
| 2300 | 11:00 PM | twenty three hundred |
| 0000 / 2400 | 12:00 AM (midnight) | zero hundred |
AR 25-50, the Army regulation covering correspondence, settles this in one sentence at paragraph 1-26: “The word ‘hours’ will not be used in conjunction with military time.” You write 1800 and you say eighteen hundred. The “hours” habit comes from film and from speech, not from the regulation.
Plenty of pages state flatly that one of these is correct and the other is a mistake. The regulation’s own wording is that military time runs “in a group of four digits, from 0001 to 2400”, so under AR 25-50 a day ends at 2400 and its first minute is 0001. In practice 0000 is used constantly for the start of a day. They are the same instant seen from either side of midnight, and the converter above accepts both.
The one that actually causes trouble is 1200. It is noon, not midnight, and it is the conversion people invert most often.
Scope note: AR 25-50 governs Army written correspondence. It is the clearest published rule on the point and the other services follow the same four-digit convention, but it is not a DoD-wide standard for how people speak.
1800 is 6:00 PM. Subtract 12 from any military hour of 1300 or later to get the PM hour: 1800 minus 12 is 6, so 6:00 PM. Said out loud it is "eighteen hundred".
Both are used, and they name the same instant from either side of midnight. 0000 starts a day; 2400 closes one. AR 25-50 states that military time runs "from 0001 to 2400", so under that regulation the day ends at 2400 and its first minute is 0001. 0000 is nonetheless in wide practical use, and neither form is an error. The one to be careful with is 1200, which is noon, not midnight.
Not in Army written correspondence. AR 25-50, paragraph 1-26, states plainly that "the word ‘hours’ will not be used in conjunction with military time." You write 1800 and you say "eighteen hundred". The "1800 hours" habit is common in films and in speech, but it is contrary to the regulation.
As a group of four digits with no colon and no AM or PM: 0530, 1145, 2215. The first two digits are the hour counted from midnight, the last two are the minutes. AR 25-50 gives the worked example that 1:37 p.m. is written 1337.
For 0100 through 1259, read it as written and add AM, so 0930 is 9:30 AM. For 1300 and later, subtract 12 and add PM, so 1945 is 7:45 PM. The two exceptions are the midnight hour, where 00xx is 12:xx AM, and 12xx, which is already PM.
A four-digit 24-hour group cannot be misread as the wrong half of the day. There is no AM or PM to drop, mishear over a radio, or lose in a written order, so 0600 and 1800 can never be confused the way "six o’clock" can.