Read military time by splitting four digits into an hour and minutes. In 1745, the hour is 17 and the minutes are 45. Subtract 12 from an hour above 12, so 1745 means 5:45 p.m. Morning hours keep their familiar number, noon is 1200, and midnight at the start of a day is 0000.
The 24-hour clock counts through the day without restarting at one after lunch. It is useful for appointments, travel and schedules because 0700 and 1900 cannot be mistaken for the same half of the day. The chart below covers every hour, followed by the exceptions that matter when you enter a time into an app or read a deadline.
Military time chart: all 24 hours
The middle column is the same time with a colon. Use either direction: find your four-digit time on the left, or your familiar clock hour on the right. For times between whole hours, keep the minutes and apply the same hour conversion.
| Military time | 24-hour clock | 12-hour clock |
|---|---|---|
| 0000 | 00:00 | 12:00 a.m. (midnight) |
| 0100 | 01:00 | 1:00 a.m. |
| 0200 | 02:00 | 2:00 a.m. |
| 0300 | 03:00 | 3:00 a.m. |
| 0400 | 04:00 | 4:00 a.m. |
| 0500 | 05:00 | 5:00 a.m. |
| 0600 | 06:00 | 6:00 a.m. |
| 0700 | 07:00 | 7:00 a.m. |
| 0800 | 08:00 | 8:00 a.m. |
| 0900 | 09:00 | 9:00 a.m. |
| 1000 | 10:00 | 10:00 a.m. |
| 1100 | 11:00 | 11:00 a.m. |
| 1200 | 12:00 | 12:00 p.m. (noon) |
| 1300 | 13:00 | 1:00 p.m. |
| 1400 | 14:00 | 2:00 p.m. |
| 1500 | 15:00 | 3:00 p.m. |
| 1600 | 16:00 | 4:00 p.m. |
| 1700 | 17:00 | 5:00 p.m. |
| 1800 | 18:00 | 6:00 p.m. |
| 1900 | 19:00 | 7:00 p.m. |
| 2000 | 20:00 | 8:00 p.m. |
| 2100 | 21:00 | 9:00 p.m. |
| 2200 | 22:00 | 10:00 p.m. |
| 2300 | 23:00 | 11:00 p.m. |
The midnight and noon labels are included deliberately. Although digital clocks commonly show 12 a.m. for midnight and 12 p.m. for noon, writing the words helps prevent a twelve-hour mistake.
How to read the four digits
Think of the format as HHMM: two digits for hours followed by two for minutes. A leading zero matters. Write 0630 rather than 630 when four-digit notation is requested. The minutes range from 00 through 59, just as they do on a familiar clock; they are not hundredths of an hour.
For hours 01 through 11, keep the hour and add a.m.: 0842 is 8:42 a.m. For hour 12, keep 12 and use p.m.: 1215 is 12:15 p.m. For hours 13 through 23, subtract 12 and add p.m.: 2035 becomes 8:35 p.m. For hour 00, replace it with 12 and use a.m.: 0018 is 12:18 a.m.
A colon does not change the value. The U.S. Naval Observatory explains 24-hour notation using both colon-separated and compact forms. Thus 1745 and 17:45 describe the same clock reading. Follow the format requested by your ticket, form or calendar rather than forcing every field into four digits.
Convert a.m. and p.m. back to military time
From 1:00 a.m. through 11:59 a.m., keep the hour and add a leading zero when needed. For afternoon and evening hours from 1 p.m. through 11 p.m., add 12 to the hour. Leave the minutes alone. For example, 6:08 a.m. becomes 0608, while 6:08 p.m. becomes 1808.
Treat the twelve o’clock hours separately: 12:25 a.m. becomes 0025, and 12:25 p.m. becomes 1225. Adding 12 to every p.m. reading would incorrectly turn noon into hour 24. A quick check is to ask whether the result belongs before lunch, after lunch or just after midnight.
Is midnight 0000 or 2400?
0000 marks the beginning of a date. Some schedules use 2400 to mark the end of that date. In that convention, November 9 at 2400 and November 10 at 0000 are the same boundary. NIST’s time-of-day guidance describes this distinction and warns that an undated reference to midnight can be ambiguous.
Do not assume every app accepts 2400 or 24:00. Use its documented format; many everyday entry fields expect hours 00 through 23. The end-of-day convention does not create a regular hour containing 24:15 or 24:30. Fifteen minutes after midnight belongs to the next date and is 0015.
For a booking or deadline, check the date as carefully as the hour. A departure at 0010 on Tuesday happens ten minutes after Monday night ends, not late Tuesday night. If an instruction only says “midnight Tuesday,” ask which boundary is intended instead of guessing.
Military time does not tell you the time zone
Changing 9:10 p.m. to 2110 changes the display format, not the location or time zone. A station clock reading 21:10 still needs the station’s local context. Likewise, an online meeting at 1400 is incomplete if participants do not know which zone the organizer means.
The Naval Observatory describes UTC as the basis for civil time and explains that local standard times are offsets from it. A bare four-digit reading does not automatically mean UTC. Keep any zone label attached to the original time, and use the event’s date when converting between locations because daylight saving rules can affect the offset.
Avoid decimal-hour and elapsed-time mistakes
A payroll total of 7.5 hours means seven hours and thirty minutes: half an hour is 30 minutes. It does not mean 07:50. Similarly, 0730 is a time of day, while a duration of 7 hours 30 minutes describes how long something lasted. Look at the field label before entering either value.
Do not subtract four-digit readings as ordinary numbers. From 0945 to 1015 is 30 minutes, not 70 minutes. Convert to hours and minutes or use a duration tool. For overnight intervals, include both dates; across a daylight saving change, use a tool that also understands the location.
A simple way to practice
Switch one everyday clock to a 24-hour display and translate a few readings without changing your appointments. Anchor noon at 12:00, dinner at something like 18:00, and late evening at 22:00. Once those are familiar, the other afternoon hours become easier to recognize without arithmetic.
If you prefer a separate practice clock, browse digital desk clocks with a 24-hour display on Amazon. Check that the model actually supports a selectable 24-hour mode; a large display alone does not guarantee it.
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