How to tell time

In English, time can be expressed in different ways — some are straightforward, some are a little tricky. Read on to know more.

Remya Prakash
Knudge.me
2 min readJun 14, 2018

There are two different ways in which you can tell time. Try to understand the manner in which time is expressed based on the two types of clocks — digital and analog.

  • Hours first, minutes second

This is the easier way to tell the time and is based on the digital clock. You read out the time that you see on a digital clock without specifically mentioning the words ‘hours’ or ‘minutes’.

1:24 → One twenty-four, 7:45 → Seven forty-five

For the minutes 01 to 09, remember to read the 0 (zero) as ‘oh’.

2:06 → Two oh six, 8:09 → Eight oh nine

If there are no minutes involved, use “o’clock”.

5:00 → Five o’clock, 12:00 → Twelve o’clock

  • Minutes first, hours second

When using this manner of expressing time, try to imagine an analog clock. How are the hands of the clocks positioned? In this way of telling time, you state the minutes followed by past/to followed by the hour. ‘Past’ or ‘after’ can be used when talking about minutes 1–30, while ‘to’ is used when talking about minutes 31–59. For multiples of five, you do not have to mention ‘minutes’.

5:17 → Seventeen minutes past five, 12:20 → Twenty past twelve

6:40 → Twenty to seven, 7:57 → Three minutes to eight

Another way to talk about minutes is using fractions — quarters and halves. As there are 60 minutes in an hour, 30 minutes and 15 minutes are considered as half and quarter, respectively.

5:30 → Half past five, 11: 30 → Half past eleven

3:15 → Quarter past three, 10:15 → Quarter past ten

3:45 → Quarter to four, 10:45 → Quarter to eleven

AM vs PM

To distinguish between morning and night we use ‘a.m.’ and ‘p.m.’. a.m. is the short form for ‘ante meridiem’ which means ‘before noon’, while p.m. stands for ‘post meridiem’, meaning ‘after noon’.

When do you have your dinner? At 8:00 p.m.

What time does you class start? It starts at 9:30 a.m.

Talking about time

There are many general ways to talk about time. ‘Midnight’ (meaning ‘middle of the night’) is at 12:00 a.m when the day begins. On the other hand, ‘noon’ indicates the beginning of the afternoon, i.e. 12:00 p.m. ‘Midday’ is also used instead of noon. However, midday can refer to the period of time between 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. as well.

To understand more about how to tell time, watch the video below.

How to Tell Time

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