Clock and hours · rules read October 11, 2026
Military time converter
Type a time either way, 1745 or 5:45 PM, and get the other clock instantly.
Written by Radif Partners · How the hours are counted · Editorial policy
Military time
1345
1:45 PM · 13:45
| 12-hour clock | 1:45 PM |
| 24-hour clock | 13:45 |
| Spoken | 13 45 hours |
| Decimal hour of the day | 13.75 |
Without AM or PM, a time is read on the 24-hour clock: 0730 is morning, 1930 is evening. Midnight is 0000 at the start of a day. How this is calculated.
To convert military time to standard time, keep the four digits as they are up to 1259, then subtract 1200 from anything from 1300 onward and add PM: 1745 becomes 5:45 PM, 2130 becomes 9:30 PM. Times from 0100 to 1159 are morning hours, so 0830 is 8:30 AM. Two cases trip people up. The hour after midnight is written 00, so 0015 is 12:15 AM, and the hour after noon is 12, so 1215 is 12:15 PM. Going the other way, add 1200 to any PM hour except 12 PM, and turn 12 AM into 00: 9:20 PM is 2120 and 12:40 AM is 0040. Midnight itself is 0000 at the start of a day and sometimes 2400 at its end, which is why a schedule can read 1600 to 2400. Military time never uses a colon or AM and PM, and the last two digits are always minutes, not decimals. A night shift from 1900 to 0730 is 12:30 long, or 12:00 once a half-hour unpaid meal is taken.
A shift in military time
Shift length
12:30
| Start | 7:00 PM |
| End | 7:30 AM (next day) |
| Decimal hours | 12.50 |
The two conversion rules
Military time counts the hours of the day from 00 to 23, followed by two digits of minutes. Converting is a matter of deciding whether the hour is past noon. From 0000 to 1159 the time is AM, with one adjustment: the 00 hour is the 12 o'clock hour after midnight, so 0045 reads 12:45 AM. From 1200 to 2359 the time is PM, and you subtract 12 from any hour above 12. That is the whole method. 1200 is noon, 1300 is 1:00 PM, 2359 is 11:59 PM.
The reverse direction mirrors it. For an AM time, write the hour with a leading zero and replace 12 with 00: 6:05 AM becomes 0605, 12:10 AM becomes 0010. For a PM time, add 12 to the hour unless it is already 12: 3:15 PM becomes 1515, 12:50 PM stays 1250. Leading zeros are not optional. 0700 is unambiguous; "700" can be misread, which is why forms and logbooks insist on four digits.
| Military | 12-hour clock | Part of the day |
|---|---|---|
| 0000 | 12:00 AM | Night, after midnight |
| 0030 | 12:30 AM | Night, after midnight |
| 0600 | 6:00 AM | Morning |
| 0745 | 7:45 AM | Morning |
| 1200 | 12:00 PM | Afternoon |
| 1230 | 12:30 PM | Afternoon |
| 1305 | 1:05 PM | Afternoon |
| 1545 | 3:45 PM | Afternoon |
| 1800 | 6:00 PM | Evening |
| 2015 | 8:15 PM | Evening |
| 2359 | 11:59 PM | Evening |
The full military time chart lists every hour and quarter hour if you prefer to look a time up rather than work it out.
Speaking military time
Spoken military time follows a few conventions that make it hard to mishear over a radio or a noisy ward. Pairs of digits are read as numbers, whole hours end in "hundred," and a leading zero is pronounced "zero" (some people say "oh"). The word "hours" is sometimes added after the time, mostly in formal settings. Nobody says "fourteen thirty PM": the AM and PM labels belong to the other system.
| Written | Spoken |
|---|---|
| 0600 | zero six hundred |
| 0745 | zero seven forty-five |
| 1200 | twelve hundred |
| 1430 | fourteen thirty |
| 1900 | nineteen hundred |
| 2005 | twenty zero five |
| 0015 | zero zero fifteen |
Military time on time cards and night shifts
Employers that run around the clock often set their time clocks to 24-hour mode, because it removes the most common punch error: an out-punch read as 7:30 AM when it was 7:30 PM. It also makes overnight shifts easy to spot. If the out time is a smaller number than the in time, the shift crossed midnight. A nurse who clocks in at 1900 and out at 0730 has worked 12:30; the arithmetic is the time to midnight plus the time after it. Under 29 CFR 785.19, a bona fide meal of 30 minutes or more with no duties comes off, which leaves 12:00 paid, while short rests stay paid under 785.18.
Dispatch centers, police departments and transit agencies log calls the same way, sometimes with seconds added (14:30:15). Payroll, on the other hand, works in decimal hours, so the minutes of a military punch still have to be divided by 60 before they are multiplied by a rate. Rounding the punches themselves is a separate step governed by 29 CFR 785.48. The hours calculator accepts military times directly, and the minutes to decimal page covers the payroll conversion.