How to Read Military Time

Four digits: the hour, then the minutes

The first two digits are the hour, from 00 to 23. The last two are the minutes, from 00 to 59, exactly as on an ordinary clock. So 0945 is hour 09 and minute 45, which is 9:45 in the morning.

Morning: the digits are the time

Before noon the hour needs no change; an hour below 10 just gets a zero in front. The Postal Service's Notice 30, which uses military time for the hours on its time records, puts it this way: "Hours in the morning need no conversion, but use a zero before hours below 10." Its example is 6:00 am written as 0600.

Afternoon and evening: take away 12

From 1300 onward, subtract 12 from the hour to read the afternoon or evening time:

Writing a time in military form works the other way round, and Notice 30 gives the rule as "to show evening hours, add 12": 1:00 pm becomes 1300.

Noon and midnight

Noon is hour 12, so nothing is added: 12:00 pm is 1200 and 12:30 pm is 1230. The day starts at hour 00, so the hour after midnight is written with zeros: 12:00 am is 0000 and 12:30 am is 0030.

Every hour of the day

Military time does not change the minutes

Only the hour is rewritten; the minutes stay as minutes, so 1640 is 4:40 pm. Some payroll and postal records go a step further and write the minutes as hundredths of an hour, which turns 4:40 pm into 1667. That combination is explained in the guide to minutes written as hundredths, and a clock time converted to postal hours and hundredths shows it in one step. To turn the minutes of any time into a fraction of the hour, convert the minutes on the homepage converter.