How do you read military time?

Understanding Military Time

Reading military time is straightforward once you grasp the basics. Instead of splitting the day into two 12-hour blocks with AM and PM, the military uses a continuous 24-hour clock that eliminates any confusion about whether it is morning or night.

A military time stamp is always written as a four-digit number without a colon. The first two digits represent the hour, and the last two digits show the minutes. The day kicks off at midnight, which is written as 0000 (pronounced "zero hundred hours"). From there, the hours count straight up through the morning.

Once you pass noon (12:00 PM), you simply keep adding to 12. For instance, 1:00 PM becomes 1300, 5:30 PM turns into 1730, and late night at 11:00 PM is written as 2300. When reading these aloud, 0800 is said as "eight hundred hours" and 1415 is "fourteen fifteen."

Because there is no AM or PM, this system is heavily relied upon by the military, emergency services, and aviation to ensure absolute clarity across different time zones and schedules.