What is 2000 on a 24-hour clock?

2000 is eight o clock in the evening. The rule is to subtract twelve from any hour of thirteen or higher, so 20 minus 12 gives 8, and the minutes stay exactly as written. The same subtraction converts every evening hour, from 1300 for 1:00 PM through to 2300 for 11:00 PM.

How do I convert 24-hour time without a chart?

For hours 1300 to 1900, take the last digit and subtract two: 1600 gives 6:00 PM. For hours 2000 to 2300, take the last digit and add eight: 2200 gives 10:00 PM. Both shortcuts are just the subtract-twelve rule rearranged so it can be done at a glance.

Does a conversion chart include the minutes?

Most charts list only the twenty-four hours, because the minutes are identical in both systems and need no conversion. 1642 is forty-two minutes past the hour whichever notation you use. Payroll charts are the exception, since they convert minutes into decimal fractions of an hour for timesheet arithmetic.

What time is 0000 on the chart?

0000 is midnight at the very start of a day, equivalent to 12:00 AM. The same instant can be written 2400 when it marks the end of the previous day. United States military practice prefers 0000 paired with the new date, which removes any doubt about which calendar day is meant.

Military Time Chart 0000 to 2359

Converting an unfamiliar time under pressure is where mistakes happen, and a military time chart exists precisely so that nobody has to do arithmetic at the wrong moment. The chart is a lookup table: the 24-hour value on one side, the 12-hour equivalent on the other, covering the whole day from 0000 at midnight through to 2359. It is the fastest way to learn the format and the safest way to check yourself once you think you have.

This page walks the table hour by hour, first the twelve morning hours and then the twelve from noon onwards, before covering how to memorise it, where the minutes fit, and the situations in which a printed copy still beats a screen. The interactive military time chart on this site gives you the same table in a form you can search.

What a Military Time Chart Actually Shows

A conversion chart shows twenty-four rows, one for each hour, pairing a four-digit 24-hour value with its 12-hour reading. It does not need 1,440 rows for every minute of the day, because the minute field is identical in both systems and requires no conversion at all.

That is the whole trick of the format, and it is why the table is short enough to learn. Only the hour changes. Morning hours gain a leading zero and keep their value, so 6:00 AM is 0600. Afternoon and evening hours have twelve added, so 6:00 PM is 1800. Everything after the first two digits is copied straight across, which is also why a nurse can write 1642 on a chart without pausing to work anything out.

The Military Time Chart Hour by Hour

The day divides neatly at noon. Everything before it is almost unchanged from the 12-hour clock; everything after it needs the subtraction.

Midnight to Noon: 0000 to 1159

The morning half is the easy half. Apart from midnight itself, each hour keeps the number you already know and simply acquires a leading zero to fill out four digits.

0000: midnight, 12:00 AM, the first minute of a new date.
0100: 1:00 AM.
0200: 2:00 AM, the hour that vanishes or repeats when daylight saving shifts.
0300: 3:00 AM.
0400: 4:00 AM.
0500: 5:00 AM.
0600: 6:00 AM, a standard reveille hour.
0700: 7:00 AM, spoken as zero seven hundred.
0800: 8:00 AM, the most common medication and shift-start time in hospitals.
0900: 9:00 AM, the last hour that needs a leading zero.
1000: 10:00 AM.
1100: 11:00 AM, the final hour before the two systems diverge.

Noon to Midnight: 1200 to 2359

From noon onwards the clock keeps counting rather than resetting, which is the point of the whole system. Subtract twelve from any of these to recover the 12-hour reading.

1200: noon, 12:00 PM, the pivot of the chart.
1300: 1:00 PM.
1400: 2:00 PM.
1500: 3:00 PM.
1600: 4:00 PM, the end of many day watches.
1700: 5:00 PM, the civilian close of business.
1800: 6:00 PM, the hour most beginners learn first.
1900: 7:00 PM.
2000: 8:00 PM.
2100: 9:00 PM.
2200: 10:00 PM.
2300: 11:00 PM, running through to 2359 one minute before midnight.

If you are meeting these figures for the first time, how to read military time explains the underlying structure before the table starts to feel like memorisation.

How Do You Memorise the Military Time Chart?

Learn three anchors and two shortcuts and the table becomes unnecessary. The anchors are 1200 for noon, 1800 for six in the evening and 2400 or 0000 for midnight; everything else can be reached from them in a second.

The first shortcut covers 1300 to 1900: take the last digit and subtract two. 1600 gives six, so 6:00 PM. 1900 gives seven, so 7:00 PM. The second covers 2000 to 2300: take the last digit and add eight. 2100 gives nine, so 9:00 PM. Both are the subtract-twelve rule rewritten to work on a single digit, which is what makes them fast enough to use in conversation. The same arithmetic in reverse is what the military time converter performs when you type a 12-hour time into it.

Reading the Table Backwards

Converting from 12-hour time into four digits is the same table read from right to left, and it needs only two decisions: whether the time is before or after noon, and whether it is one of the two special cases at the ends of the day.

For any AM time other than 12, keep the hour and pad it to two digits, so 6:45 AM becomes 0645. For any PM time other than 12, add twelve, so 9:20 PM becomes 2120. Noon is 1200 and midnight at the start of a day is 0000; those two resist the rule and simply have to be learned. A written date should travel with the time whenever the entry could be read the following morning, which is the convention ISO 8601 formalises by writing the date first and the time second. Supervisors reviewing a timesheet, a dispatch log or a nursing chart depend on that pairing far more than they depend on the hours themselves.

Where Do the Minutes Fit?

Minutes never convert. They run from 00 to 59 in both systems, so 1642 is forty-two minutes past four in the afternoon and needs no adjustment whatsoever. The only field that ever changes is the hour.

The exception is payroll. A timesheet that records 0745 to 1615 has to become a decimal number of hours before it can be multiplied by a rate, and that is a different conversion entirely, with its own table. Reading 1750 as seventeen and a half hours is the classic error, and military time minutes and decimal hours works through why base 60 and base 10 must be kept apart.

When a Printed Military Time Chart Still Helps

A printed chart earns its place wherever hands are busy, screens are absent, or a new arrival is still learning. It is a training aid first and a reference second, and its value falls away as fluency rises.

Nursing stations tape one inside a medication cupboard so that a medication administration record is never filled in from memory. Dispatch desks keep one by the radio, since a dispatch log written in 24-hour time has to match the timestamps the responding crew will file. Railway staff, warehouse supervisors and volunteer marshals at events all reach for the same laminated card in the first week and stop reaching for it in the second. The midnight rows are the ones people keep checking longest, because 0000 and 2400 describe the same instant from different directions, a distinction explored in is midnight 0000 or 2400.

Conclusion

A military time chart is a short table doing a large job: twenty-four rows that remove every AM and PM judgement call from a working day. Learn the noon pivot, apply the subtract-twelve rule, remember that minutes never change, and you will outgrow the table within a week. Until then, keep the full military time chart to hand, compare it against the live 24-hour clock, or browse the rest of the guides from the militarytime.now homepage.

Military Time Chart: Every Hour From 0000 to 2359