Posted by Robert Hill on April 11, 2010 at 12:21:19 user eclrh.
In Reply to: posted by Ed Kiser on April 11, 2010 at 10:03:49:
John has answered on "pull left"
I always avoid saying "twelve AM" or "twelve PM", and when I hear someone else say it, my esteem for that person decreases. I don't know if there's an accepted standard meaning.
I could argue from a mathematical point of view that 12 AM should mean noon and 12 PM should mean midnight. Or I could argue from a linguistic point of view that 12 AM and 12 PM should both mean midnight and neither of them should mean noon.
If I had to choose which day midnight belongs to, I would probably say the day that's ending, but I don't know whether others would agree. The military usually arrange operations start at 00.01 to avoid the confusions concerning midnight.
Eight bells (or four bells in the case of the two dog watches) always refers to the watch that is just ending. A mathematically inclined person could claim that it's also zero bells in the watch that's just beginning. Eight bells tends (or tend) to be more audible than zero bells.