I know that AM/PM is for ante/post meridiem, but what is it actually called? Meridian indicator? 12 hour indicator? Something way more clever?
1 Answer
Answer
Oddly enough, this question seems to already have been answered (and then later removed) at StackOverflow. (this is the last existing Wayback Machine backup link to it.)
The Unicode standard for date/time formatting calls it "period".
Wikipedia says: The 12-hour clock is a time conversion convention in which the 24 hours of the day are divided into two periods
Ruby documentation (and probably a lot of strftime references) seems to refer them as "Meridiem Indicator".
From a user interface perspective, a "Period" label is too ambiguous, and "Meridiem Indicator" too pedantic, still leaving "AM/PM" as the best choice.
Aside
As for the actual meanings of AM/PM, they come from the Latin "ante meridiem" ("before noon") and "post meridiem" ("after noon").
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18@Jason, because software developers think about naming variables properly. It is built into the Object-Oriented mindset. Jader, a commenter, said it well: "It's funny that the question intrinsically is not programming related, but all programmers can understand why you posted it here."– rajah9Jun 3, 2013 at 16:51
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6@rajah9 this is actually why i asked this question in the first place ;)– JasonJan 7, 2014 at 18:34
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