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Military Time Chart: Complete 24-Hour Clock Reference Guide

Military time is one of those things that's either completely obvious or slightly baffling — and there's no middle ground. If you've worked in healthcare, aviation, emergency services, or the military, you've been reading 24-hour time for years without thinking about it. If you haven't, "1430" looks like a four-digit number that needs translating.

The translation isn't hard. The military time chart is the shortcut — you look up the number, get the standard time, and move on. This page has that chart, plus the two conversion rules you'll actually use.

What Is Military Time?

Military time is a way of expressing time using a 24-hour clock — hours run from 0000 (midnight) to 2359 (11:59 PM). No AM or PM. No ambiguity about whether "six o'clock" means morning or evening.

The format is always four digits: first two are the hour (00–23), last two are the minutes (00–59). That's the whole system.

What people call "military time" and the "24-hour clock" are the same thing. The one small difference: military time typically drops the colon (1345), while the civilian 24-hour format keeps it (13:45). The numbers mean the same thing.

The name "military time" is primarily an American term. Most of the world just calls it the 24-hour clock and uses it as the default — European train schedules, international flight times, hospital charts, and computer systems all use this format.

Military Time Chart — 0000 to 2359

The full 24-hour reference. Hours 0100–1159 are the same as regular AM times (drop the leading zero). Hours 1300–2359 are PM times — subtract 1200 to get the PM hour.

| Military | Standard | Notes | |---|---|---| | 0000 | 12:00 AM | Midnight — start of day | | 0100 | 1:00 AM | | | 0200 | 2:00 AM | | | 0300 | 3:00 AM | | | 0400 | 4:00 AM | | | 0500 | 5:00 AM | | | 0600 | 6:00 AM | | | 0700 | 7:00 AM | | | 0800 | 8:00 AM | Work start for many | | 0900 | 9:00 AM | | | 1000 | 10:00 AM | | | 1100 | 11:00 AM | | | 1200 | 12:00 PM | Noon — exception to the subtraction rule | | 1300 | 1:00 PM | | | 1400 | 2:00 PM | | | 1500 | 3:00 PM | | | 1600 | 4:00 PM | | | 1700 | 5:00 PM | | | 1800 | 6:00 PM | | | 1900 | 7:00 PM | | | 2000 | 8:00 PM | | | 2100 | 9:00 PM | | | 2200 | 10:00 PM | | | 2300 | 11:00 PM | | | 2359 | 11:59 PM | Last minute of the day |

Minutes work identically in both systems. 1345 = 1:45 PM (13 hours → 1 PM, 45 minutes unchanged). 0830 = 8:30 AM. The only thing that changes is how the hour is expressed.

For the full 0000–2359 chart including every minute of the day, the military time converter has the complete reference with the standard time equivalent and pronunciation guide for each entry.

Military Time Chart in Minutes

The minutes in military time are identical to standard time. There's no conversion needed — 0000 to 0059 are midnight minutes, 1300 to 1359 are 1 PM minutes, and so on.

The one thing worth knowing: military time charts sometimes show minute increments separately. That's because payroll systems, healthcare charting, and aviation logs often need to express durations like "30 minutes" as a decimal. Half an hour is 0.5, a quarter is 0.25.

For those working in payroll where time needs to be expressed in decimal hours, the decimal time converter handles those conversions — 1:45 becomes 1.75, 0:30 becomes 0.5.

How to Convert Military Time to Regular Time

Two rules cover almost every case.

For times 0001 through 1159 (AM times): Drop the leading zero and add AM. The hour is already correct.

That's it. No math — just drop the zero and add AM.

For times 1300 through 2359 (PM times): Subtract 1200 from the hour, then add PM.

The two exceptions to memorize:

Those two are the ones that trip people up most consistently. Everything else follows the rules above.

Going the other direction — standard time to military:

For AM times: add a leading zero if single digit, drop the AM, keep the minutes.

For PM times: add 1200 to the hour (except 12 PM).

📊 The 24-hour clock is the international time standard (ISO 8601) and is the default in over 100 countries. The 12-hour AM/PM format is primarily used in the United States, Canada, Australia, and a few other countries — National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

How to Say Military Time Out Loud

This is where civilian speakers of military time sometimes hesitate. The spoken format is consistent:

Examples:

You don't say "AM" or "PM" — the 24-hour format makes that redundant. "Fourteen thirty" is unambiguously 2:30 in the afternoon. There's only one 1430 in a day.

Who Uses Military Time?

The military is the obvious one — hence the name. But it's actually a standard format across several industries where ambiguity about AM vs PM can cause real problems.

Healthcare is arguably the biggest user outside the military. Hospitals chart medications, procedures, and vital signs in 24-hour time specifically to eliminate AM/PM confusion. A medication dose at "6" is dangerous ambiguity. A dose at "0600" vs "1800" is unambiguous. Many US hospitals switched to 24-hour charting in the 1990s after studies showed AM/PM confusion contributed to medication errors.

Aviation runs on Zulu time — UTC expressed in 24-hour format. Every flight plan, air traffic control transmission, and weather report uses the 24-hour clock. A flight departing at "1400Z" departs at 2:00 PM UTC. The pilot, the ATC, and the ground crew all read the same time without converting anything.

Emergency services — police, fire, EMS — use military time for dispatch logs and incident reports. "Call received at 2317" is faster to type and clearer to read later than "11:17 PM."

Software and servers store timestamps in 24-hour UTC format internally. Your phone shows you a 12-hour clock by default, but the underlying timestamp in any log file or database is in 24-hour UTC.

📊 The Joint Commission, which accredits US healthcare organizations, recommends 24-hour time for all medication orders and medical records to reduce ambiguity and improve patient safety. This recommendation has been in place since the early 2000s.

The Most Common Military Time Conversions

These are the ones people look up repeatedly:

| Military | Standard | |---|---| | 0000 | 12:00 AM (Midnight) | | 0600 | 6:00 AM | | 0800 | 8:00 AM | | 1200 | 12:00 PM (Noon) | | 1300 | 1:00 PM | | 1500 | 3:00 PM | | 1700 | 5:00 PM | | 1800 | 6:00 PM | | 2000 | 8:00 PM | | 2100 | 9:00 PM | | 2359 | 11:59 PM |

For anything not in this table, use the subtraction rule: military time minus 1200 equals the PM hour. Or use the military time converter for instant two-way conversion — type a military time, get standard time back, or enter a standard time to see the military equivalent.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is 1300 in military time?

1300 military time is 1:00 PM. Subtract 1200: 1300 − 1200 = 1. Add PM. 1300 hours = one o'clock in the afternoon.

What is 1800 military time?

1800 is 6:00 PM. 1800 − 1200 = 600 = 6:00 PM. Spoken as "eighteen hundred hours."

What is 0000 in military time?

0000 is midnight — the very start of a new day. It's 12:00 AM. Some contexts use 2400 to mean the end of the current day (same instant), but 0000 is the standard military format for midnight.

What is 1200 in military time?

1200 is noon — 12:00 PM. This is the exception to the subtraction rule. 1200 minus 1200 would give you 0, not 12 — so just memorize it. 1200 = noon.

Does military time use a colon?

No. Official military time is written as four digits without a colon — 1345, not 13:45. The civilian 24-hour clock (European train schedules, computer displays, ISO 8601) typically includes a colon. The meaning is identical.

What is 2400 in military time?

2400 and 0000 refer to the same moment — midnight. Some contexts use 2400 to mean "end of day" and 0000 to mean "start of day." In practice, they're interchangeable, and most modern systems use 0000.

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