How to Read Military Time (24-Hour Clock)

Military time is the 24-hour clock written as four digits, with no colon and no AM or PM. Once you know one rule, that afternoon hours keep counting past 12, you can read it at a glance. This guide covers reading, saying and converting military time, with a complete chart, how midnight works, Zulu time and a few Excel formulas.

How military time works

The day runs from 0000 (midnight) to 2359 (one minute before the next midnight). The first two digits are the hour, 00 to 23, and the last two are the minutes, 00 to 59.

• The hour after midnight is 00: 12:30 AM is 0030.
• From 1 AM to 11:59 AM, hours match the 12-hour clock with a leading zero: 7:30 AM is 0730.
• Noon is 1200.
• After noon, the hours keep counting: 1:00 PM is 1300, 6:45 PM is 1845 and 11:00 PM is 2300.

Because every moment of the day has its own number, morning and evening can never be confused. That is why the format is standard wherever a misread time could be costly.

How to say military time

Say the hour pair, then the minute pair. When the minutes are 00, say “hundred.”

Hours before 10 keep their leading zero in speech: 0600 is “zero six hundred,” though many people say “oh six hundred.” The word “hours” is often added in formal use (“seventeen forty-five hours”), but AM and PM never are. “Hundred” is only for times on the hour, so 1430 is “fourteen thirty,” not “fourteen hundred thirty.”

Converting 12-hour time to military time

1. 12:00 to 12:59 AM (the hour after midnight): replace 12 with 00. 12:40 AM becomes 0040.
2. 1:00 to 11:59 AM: drop the colon and add a leading zero if needed. 7:15 AM becomes 0715, and 10:50 AM becomes 1050.
3. 12:00 to 12:59 PM (the hour after noon): keep 12. 12:05 PM becomes 1205.
4. 1:00 to 11:59 PM: add 12 to the hour. 4:30 PM becomes 4 + 12 = 1630, and 11:59 PM becomes 2359.

Converting military time to 12-hour time

1. 0000 to 0059: the hour is 12 AM. 0025 is 12:25 AM.
2. 0100 to 1159: it is AM; drop any leading zero and add a colon. 0545 is 5:45 AM.
3. 1200 to 1259: it is PM. 1230 is 12:30 PM.
4. 1300 to 2359: subtract 12 from the hour and add PM. 1315 is 1:15 PM, and 2250 is 10:50 PM.

For quick one-off conversions in either direction, use the military time converter.

Military time chart

An interactive version with every quarter hour, which highlights any time you pick, is on the military time chart page.

Minutes, seconds and decimal hours

Minutes never change between the two systems: 3:07 PM is 1507, and 1507 is 3:07 PM. When seconds matter, add two more digits (153045 is 3:30:45 PM), or write 15:30:45 with colons as most civilian systems do.

Do not confuse military time with decimal hours. 1730 is a clock time, 5:30 PM. A shift of 7 hours 30 minutes is 7.5 decimal hours, not 7.30. Timesheets and payroll often need the decimal form, which the time to decimal calculator produces.

Midnight: 0000 or 2400?

0000 is midnight at the start of a day. Some organizations write 2400 for midnight at the end of a day, so a shift that runs “1600 to 2400” on Monday ends at the same moment as 0000 on Tuesday. The clock never shows 2401: one minute after 2359 is 0000 on the next day.

Because 2400 can be ambiguous, many schedules avoid it and use 2359, or 0000 with an explicit date. Noon is always 1200.

Zulu time and military time zones

Military and aviation messages usually give times in Zulu time, which is Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), marked with a Z: 1430Z is 14:30 UTC. Every time zone also has a letter:

• A to M (skipping J) are UTC+1 to UTC+12.
• N to Y are UTC−1 to UTC−12.
• Z (Zulu) is UTC itself.
• J (Juliet) means the observer’s local time.

A full date-time group adds the day and month: 151430Z MAR 26 means the 15th day, 1430 UTC, March 2026. In New York that moment is 1030 local time, because US daylight saving time began on March 8, 2026, putting Eastern time at UTC−4. The Zulu time converter does the offset math and the date change for you; just pick the offset in effect on your date.

Where military time is used

• Armed forces, where orders and logs need unambiguous times
• Aviation, which uses Zulu time for flight plans and weather reports
• Hospitals and healthcare, for medication schedules and patient charts
• Police, fire and EMS, for dispatch logs and incident reports
• Transportation and logistics, including many train, bus and shipping schedules
• Daily life outside the US, where the 24-hour clock is the norm, usually written with a colon, as in 17:45

Memory tricks

• Anything below 1200 is morning. 00xx is simply the first hour after midnight.
• For 1300 to 1900, drop the first digit and subtract 2 from the second: 1500 is 3 PM, 1700 is 5 PM and 1900 is 7 PM.
• For 2000 to 2300, subtract 12: 2000 is 8 PM and 2200 is 10 PM.
• Anchor a few landmarks: 1200 is lunch, 1700 is the end of a nine-to-five day, 1800 is dinner and 2100 is 9 PM.

Military time in Excel

Excel stores times as fractions of a day, so convert a military number into a real time before doing any math. Here column A holds military times entered as plain numbers, B converts them to Excel times and C turns them back into four-digit text:

=TIME(INT(A2/100),MOD(A2,100),0)
=TEXT(B2,"hhmm")

Format column B as h:mm AM/PM (Format Cells, Ctrl+1 or Cmd+1 → Custom). Excel drops leading zeros, so format column A with the custom format 0000 to show 830 as 0830. In Google Sheets, use Format → Number → Custom number format.

A few more tips:

• =--TEXT(A2,"00\:00") is an alternative to the TIME formula; format the result the same way.
• Column C is text, which is fine for display but not for math. To keep a real time and still show it in 24-hour form, format it with the custom format hhmm or hh:mm.
• TIME wraps hour 24 back to zero, so 2400 converts to 12:00 AM, the same as 0000.
• For elapsed time, subtract the earlier time from the later one. From 0830 to 1200, the formula below returns 3.5 hours, and MOD keeps overnight spans positive. More on that in Excel night shift hours.

=MOD(B3-B2,1)*24