12:00 am. or 12:00 pm

[Abumashal]

If time is 12:00 am. or 12:00 pm.
How can I say the time specifically noon and midnight?

[Torsten]

Well, it could be high noon and (at) midnight.

TOEIC listening, photographs: Reading on an airplane

[Mister Micawber]

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I make a point of avoiding am. and pm., Abumashal, precisely because of the automatic confusion. I teach my students to use 12:00 noon and 12:00 midnight, just as I teach them is spell out the month rather than express it as a number-- 5 June 2005 or June 5, 2005, not 5/6/2005.

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Native English teacher at Mister Micawber's

[Abumashal]

Thank you Torsten, Mister Micawber.

so I can say now It half past eleven highnoon/noon.

[Carbonarius]

There's the 24 hour clock too (I don't know if this is how they call it in English): 06:00 for eleven in the morning, and 18:00 for eleven in the afternoon, for example. When speaking, we hardly ever say "it's eighteen o'clock" in Spain, we say "it's six in the afternoon" instead, but for timetables the 24 hours clock is the only one we use. Actually, I think that the main reason that people here are so accustomed to this system, is that newspapers use it for the TV schedules.

And what about people from other countries? Do you use this system too?

[Mister Micawber]

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The 24-hour clock, or 'military clock', as many Americans know it, is commonly used in Japan too.

For this American at least, it just adds one more level of grammatical confusion-- should there be a colon? (1300? 13:00?.... or 13.00, which is sometimes seen?) Should 'hours' be written after it? (1300 hrs, 13:00 h?) Or, god forfend, 'o'clock'? (13.00 o'clock?) The opportunities for argument seem endless!

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Native English teacher at Mister Micawber's