Military time refers to a timekeeping system where the hours of the day are numbered 0-24, rather than the standard time system's numbering of 1-12 am and 1-12 pm. Military time is also called the 24-hour clock.
Military time is written in the format hh.mm, where h=hours and m=minutes. Between 1.00 am and 12.59 pm military time and standard time look very similar. For example, 4.30 am standard time is written as 04.30 in military time. However, after 12.59 pm it becomes slightly more difficult to correlate military time and standard time. For example, 6.08 pm standard time is written as 18.08 in military time.
After 12.59 pm, an easy way to convert military time to standard time is to subtract 12 hours from the military time then add the pm suffix. For example, subtracting 12 hours from the military time of 17.45 gives the standard time of 5.45 pm.
Midnight can be expressed as either 00.00 or 24.00 in military time. In practise, 00.00 is used to refer to the start of a day, and 24.00 to refer to the end of a day.
As the name suggests, military time is used by the military to avoid potentially dangerous situations that may result if soldiers misunderstand standard time's am or pm suffix. Military time is used in other industries where time is critical, such as computing, aviation, railway timetables and medical situations. Military time is the ISO international standard for the notation of time, and is used as instead of standard time in many countries, especially in Europe.