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Question about Writing the Time

ReflectiveAcuity

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This has been driving me nuts for years. Not sure, but it seems I have seen every variation listed below from different writers and sources when it comes to writing the time.


Can you guys tell me which one is correct? That is, if there is a “correct” way of writing it. I’m also wondering if it varies depending on country of origin. I do Fiction in the U.S.


7:45AM
7:45 AM
7:45am
7:45 am
7:45A.M.
7:45 A.M.
7:45a.m.
7:45 a.m.


Thanks in advance for your help! Sorry if this has been asked before in this forum; If so, I missed that thread.
 

indianroads

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IMO you should pick a format and stick with it.

The meetings are at 8:45 AM today and at eight o'clock tomorrow morning... I don't think that works.

The format I use:
At 3:47 AM, the design was finally complete.
 

ReflectiveAcuity

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From Purdue O.W.L., an excellent grammar resource.


The format I use: At 3:47 AM.


Okay, thanks guys. Still a bit confused by this. So different formats work? Uppercase letters without the periods, or lower case letters with periods? I guess what is consistent is a space between the digits and "AM/PM"?
 

neandermagnon

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Okay, thanks guys. Still a bit confused by this. So different formats work? Uppercase letters without the periods, or lower case letters with periods? I guess what is consistent is a space between the digits and "AM/PM"?

In British English having full stops after initials is considered old-fashioned so it's more likely to be written 7:45 am. So maybe if you've seen it that way it was in a British book. Having am in capitals looks odd to me but not wrong as such. Having full stops in there looks old fashioned and/or American.
 

bigbluepencil

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Many print publishers adhere to Chicago Manual of Style for fiction, and CMOS says 1:00 a.m., or to use one in the morning, e.g. Probably a good idea to follow CMOS on that if you plan on submitting your work for publication, to a traditional publisher or epub. You'll get brownie points, even if your editor needs you to change it to conform with their house style.
 

screenscope

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I just keep it simple and consistent, as in this format, 1.30pm. I've never had it raised by publishers or anyone else. And I doubt readers care.
 

bigbluepencil

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I just keep it simple and consistent, as in this format, 1.30pm. I've never had it raised by publishers or anyone else. And I doubt readers care.

Keeping it consistent is excellent, and if the story is great, a lot of readers who notice won't go out of their way to comment about it in a review, they'll just gobble up your stuff and snap up your next book. Sorry if I sounded snooty. It's just, I'm very anal as an editor; Being a content and line ed for Lyrical Press for any length of time will do that to you. Too, you'd likely be surprised at the seemingly inconsequential things that bump readers out of a story. I just checked out Stormtime on Amazon. From reading the Look Inside offering, you're a wonderful storyteller. :) And, I love YA SF and YA Supernatural. So lucky to have had Nerine Dorman and A.C. Mason, who wrote dystopian, on my roster. Getting a sub from them was always a really good day; I edited sooo much romance, ya know?
 
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screenscope

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Keeping it consistent is excellent, and if the story is great, a lot of readers who notice won't go out of their way to comment about it in a review, they'll just gobble up your stuff and snap up your next book. Sorry if I sounded snooty. It's just, I'm very anal as an editor; Being a content and line ed for Lyrical Press for any length of time will do that to you. Too, you'd likely be surprised at the seemingly inconsequential things that bump readers out of a story. I just checked out Stormtime on Amazon. From reading the Look Inside offering, you're a wonderful storyteller. :) And, I love YA SF and YA Supernatural. So lucky to have had Nerine Dorman and A.C. Mason, who wrote dystopian, on my roster. Getting a sub from them was always a really good day; I edited sooo much romance, ya know?

Thanks, bigbluepencil.

When I was younger I use to agonise about all sorts of things in writing that I now consider minor and inconsequential and this falls into both of those categories in my opinion. Whether I am right or wrong (or if there is a right and wrong) is another matter entirely :)
 
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Maryn

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The Chicago Manual of Style says to write out the words, with no hyphen between the hours and the minutes. The doorbell rang at six thirty. The pizza arrived at seven forty-five. I left work early, at four fifteen.

It's not something that's going to get you rejected if you do it some other way, so long as you're consistent, but adhering to one of the manuals used as a Voice of Authority is never wrong, even if a publisher's house style does it some other way.

Maryn, who wrote down all her goofs as editors caught them
 

Sonya Heaney

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Wow. I never knew people wrote the time as a.m. and p.m. - talk about cultural differences!

Unless you're self-publishing, no publisher is going to reject you over this. (Or so I thought until I read the comments above. Would US editors really reject based on people not following a particular American style guide? Weird.)

I edited sooo much romance, ya know?

Edit: What are you trying to say here? (Don't worry - I know. And yes, I'm offended. I hope you respected your authors more than you respect our genre.)
 
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WriteMinded

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Wow. I never knew people wrote the time as a.m. and p.m. - talk about cultural differences!

Unless you're self-publishing, no publisher is going to reject you over this. (Or so I thought until I read the comments above. Would US editors really reject based on people not following a particular American style guide? Weird.)
I cannot believe a publisher would reject anyone's book over something so small. That would be too weird. Haha, oh you said that already. Well, let me second it, WEIRD.
 

bigbluepencil

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Edit: What are you trying to say here? (Don't worry - I know. And yes, I'm offended. I hope you respected your authors more than you respect our genre.)

I completely understand why you're offended, and should have given more context. Sorry! Romance is mostly what I read for pleasure, and I write Medieval and Time Travel romance. The time in my career I was referring to, which obviously I should have explained, was after our pub stopped accepting non-romance fiction and before they opened up acceptance for YA genres. All eds at our pub read all cold subs. And, besides content editing and reading the slush pile, I did line edits and managed the line editors, which meant when a line edit was completed, my duty was review. That entailed reading that MS. The majority of what we pubbed was contemporary romance and erotica, a much smaller percentage, the sub genres, for the last seven years I was there. I loved all my roster authors and reading all that well-written romance, but variety in anything is the spice of life. As for respecting my authors, yes, I did, and still do; They're amazing storytellers, dedicated to their craft, and the best people. Several of them who self pub are freelance clients. They get the friends and family rate for three complete rounds($2.50/page, which is waaay less than the regular rate of a penny a word)plus free help with blurbs, taglines, queries, synops, formatting, whatever they need. And, if they're pubbing a free read for promotional purposes, they get all services for free. Because I want them to succeed and their books to garner good reviews, as I did with all my roster authors. An author's success is an ed's validation we're doing a thorough job. We're definitely not in it for the money.
 
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