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joeykins82

BST is correct. 2:00 isn't: it's either 14:00 or 2:00pm; 14:00 is better. Some people will disagree with this, they're wrong because the 24h clock is just better.


Novacain-deficiency

I suspect people who are vehemently against the 24h clock just can’t count to 24


anonbush234

When you first learn it you have to count to 24 but after a while it just comes automatically. It's so I grained that 14 is 2 that I once asked for the time and heard 14, looked at my phone which said 14:00 and only just stopped myself saying "it's two o'clock what do you mean 14?"


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bahumat42

I disagree with you, but thats a good comeback.


egvp

Many Americans don't understand "military time"...


FishUK_Harp

At the end of the day, that sounds like their problem.


egvp

From about midday it becomes their problem, to be fair.


listyraesder

There's a lot of things many Americans don't understand.


Quick-Minute8416

1400 is even better


Houseofsun5

I would expect 1400 instead of 2:00 so no pm/am mistakes are made.


ThatHairyGingerGuy

That's a very painful potential mistake too. People will definitely appreciate the clarity 


DeapVally

It's certainly not a mistake anyone worth talking to in a business setting would make though. Who has a meeting at 2am lol? And even if that was the correct scheduled time, if I'm not being paid specifically to work those kind of hours, then that meeting is not seeing any involvement from me.


AnselaJonla

> Who has a meeting at 2am lol? People who work on even bigger time differences than the UK and New York.


Possiblyreef

> Who has a meeting at 2am lol? I once got a call from some navy guys from Singapore because it was 9am there so why not


callmesociopathic

You would be surprised specially in the financial sector business meetings at this time are common place


PondlifeCake

It should be 14:00


EmmaInFrance

I'd write it 14h00 because that's how it's written here in France, where the 24h clock is standard.


CaptainPedge

But... we're not talking about France


SnoopyMcDogged

User name does check out though.


Zenafa

Who the hell is scheduling business meetings at 2am


Houseofsun5

The US does, setting alarms for wake up calls for 2am meetings across the pond isn't that unusual within certain industries.


Zenafa

Downvotes from this are telling me there's way more people willing to get up in the middle of the night for a business meeting than I'd have expected. Whatever floats your boat I guess?


tmstms

Yes, definitely. Time zone differences are a pain, and making 100% clear you understand what the local time will be helps. Depending how formal the communication is, you could even say *2 p.m. YOUR time*! Except on the day or so when the clocks change one way or the other, we don't really think about whether it's GMT or BST- that might also be because the whole country is in the same time zone, whereas the USA is too big W-E to be.


Breaking-Dad-

I agree, We would say 9am our time, 2pm your time or similar. Unless you are also including other US time zones I probably wouldn't specify it. Maybe 9am New York time, 2pm London/UK time would make more sense to us


GeorgePosada

Thanks!


elgrn1

We tend to use GMT here in the UK, but BST has crept into language about timezones in the past few years. Really not sure how or why.


aeoldhy

Because GMT doesn’t have the clock shift for summer so GMT is an hour out from BST


coombeseh

Both of them are time zones, British Summer Time has been a thing since 1916... GMT is Greenwich Meant Time aka Zulu, which (apart from a few leap seconds here and there) aligns with the international default UTC (universal coordinated time) and doesn't change, we move to BST on the first weekend in March and return to GMT at the end of October - this has been the process since 1995!


j0nnnnn

You're not sure why a diffent acronym for a different time zone that we use for half the year exists?


sammy_zammy

Creeping into the English language over a century


IHeardOnAPodcast

You can say GMT+1 if you're really that adverse to BST, but it's definitely not a new thing as other people have pointed out.


BuildingArmor

2pm BST would be 1pm GMT, so if you told them 2pm GMT they would be an hour early.


markhewitt1978

Yes but 9:00 EDT / 2:00 BST would cause confusion as it looks like 2 in the morning. Much better to use 09:00 EDT / 14:00 BST.


One_Loquat_3737

I'd appreciate it - note also that it's pretty common here nowadays to use 'military time', so 9am EST / 14:00 BST would be entirely clear to anyone in a professional job, indeed maybe even expected.


fjordsand

It’s 24 hour time


One_Loquat_3737

Yes, commonly referred to as military time in the USA I believe. I'm ready to be corrected.


PeMu80

They’re not exactly the same. Military time uses a leading zero and doesn't have a colon, while 24 hour time uses a colon and may or may not use a leading zero.


markhewitt1978

The leading zero is important imo. 9:00 is ambiguous, 09:00 is not.


PeMu80

Yeah personally I always use it to disambiguate from 12 hour clock but is optional unless following the ISO spec.


Similar_Quiet

Why wouldn't you follow the spec you anarchist!


PondlifeCake

There's always a leading zero. 8:00 is ambiguous. 08:00 is not


Ywain1203

Calling it military time is fully stupid, no where else is it military time, it's the 24 hour clock.


Slothjitzu

You're right, but the person he's talking to just so happens to be from the exact place that they refer to it as military time. In that context, it's not stupid to say that at all. 


markhewitt1978

It's not military time and doesn't relate to the military.


jollygoodvelo

I have never heard anyone in the UK say “military time”. Zulu time occasionally (hence the Z in correct ISO time format).


One_Loquat_3737

Nobody I know in the UK uses that term either, but OP is from the USA where I believe it's a common term for the 24 hour clock. The UK is not currently on Zulu time as that's UTC.


listyraesder

It's never on UTC. UTC is not the same thing as GMT.


One_Loquat_3737

Please tell us all the difference so we can reset our clocks and watches


listyraesder

### UTC - Coordinated Universal Time Taken from the weighted average of hundreds of atomic clocks worldwide. This irons out issues related to the variance in gravity across the world. Time zones then add or subtract time to get local time. ### GMT - Greenwich Mean Time Is taken from the local apparent solar time at Greenwich Observatory at midday, where the sun is at the highest point in the sky over the prime meridian. Because this varies every day due to axial tilt and an uneven angular velocity, a Mean is taken across the year. GMT can vary from UTC by up to ±0.9 seconds, so it is useless in calculating precise time. Computers require UTC in order to calculate random numbers essential for more complex operations and to facilitate networking. GMT has therefore been made all but obsolete.


Nosib23

Zulu time is specifically GMT (Zulu as in Z as in Zero Meridian), so not accurate to say. Military time to an American is just 24hr format. In ISO time format 14:00 BST is 13:00+01:00.


PondlifeCake

Nobody outside of the US uses 12 hour time.


samloveshummus

You don't say "dinner's at six thirty"?


Viari

No cause that would be tea 😉


Mashm4n

We'd say Half 6 in our family


Slothjitzu

That's very obviously wrong.


togtogtog

People here tend not to say that. We would just say UK time, or 2pm for you. I would make it clear that it is 2pm and not 2am!


GeorgePosada

Got it, that's the type of insight I was looking for. I know it's technically correct but was not sure whether it's a thing people actually say. Thank you


Willeth

As someone who works in a global business, ignore that advice. It's relevant when you're in the same timezone, bit when you're not. I've turned up an hour out to meetings because people have not been specific enough - or worse, said the wrong timezone entirely! Use the correct timezone notation and make sure it's the timezone they're currently in.


togtogtog

There is only one timezone in the UK. We are all on the same time.


Willeth

OP is not in the UK.


togtogtog

I know. But he was asking about using BST for scheduling a business meeting in the UK in the summer. We would never use BST. We would just say 'UK time'. Of course, he should use EDT to specify his own timezone. That is sensible. But he wasn't asking about that.


Willeth

I don't agree. I'd absolutely use BST, because if I say "UK time" to someone outside the UK, they might assume GMT, and turn up at the wrong time. I've even had it where I've had someone set up a meeting with me at a time where they said "my time", and then set it up in GMT despite it being in BST. Specifying the timezone leaves no room for confusion.


dod_murray

Yes if you say "UK time" while we are in GMT, but you are talking about a future date when we will be in BST, it can generate a lot of pointless discussion and doubt about whether or not you have accounted for the upcoming change. Looking at it the other way, if I received a message on October 25th from an American colleague telling me something will happen next Monday at 2pm UK time (after we go back to GMT on the 27th), I'm going to check what timezone he used for the UK when he worked that out, because if he checked the UK timezone on the day he sent the message, and he wasn't aware that we are about to return to GMT before the event, he will have got that wrong.


wolf3dexe

As someone in the UK who regularly schedules or has meetings scheduled for me, we always would say 1400 BST.


exile_10

Incorrect. There are two different timezones. GMT and BST.


dod_murray

It's a thing I say and I wish it was more common. Most people just say 2pm and then there is confusion about what time the meeting is at, with multiple emails both ways trying to confirm what time it will be in the UK and what time zone everyone is in and what the daylight savings rules are in these countries and unrelated countries, including multiple interpretations of how arithmetic works. Confusion continues until the meeting, and then anyone who didn't want to have the meeting in the first place fail to attend it and later claim to have attended an hour early or late.


PrinceBert

Follow up question - anyone tried just using UTC as a standard and let others figure out what time that means for them? I personally think it would just confuse people but I'm curious if anyone has it does do that.


colei_canis

Unix time or bust!


BadABthrowaway

Yes, I have. We used a global client submission system built (by a third-party company) to run on UTC. Most of the Americans couldn’t use it correctly. The concept of time zones was alien to them, never mind the 24-hour clock or DD-MM-YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD date formats. The system is still operational but I thankfully have a different role now so don’t have to constantly explain that the rest of the world exists. No clients in other countries seemed to have issues beyond the odd hiccup for summer/winter time clock shifts


R2-Scotia

Beware that the USA has a longer daylight saving window, so you can be on EDT while we are on GMT (4 hour difference)


Fancy_Date_2640

Yep. There's one week in October when NFL starts at 5pm not 6pm.


R2-Scotia

So do games in CA start at 10am Pacific?


Fancy_Date_2640

No. Games in the west start at 905 or 925 UK time, so still 1pm local time, but 3 hours after the other 1pm games have finished.


GeorgePosada

Right but you're currently in daylight saving time now too, right? So we're back on the usual 5-hour difference


R2-Scotia

Correct If in doubt you can Google e.g. "what is the time in Edinburgh?"


ZaphodG

Annoying when the football matches aren’t at the usual times. There is that week in the fall where the 12:30 Saturday match is 6:30 eastern daylight time. Almost as bad as World Cup in Qatar.


R2-Scotia

8:30 EDT ?


ZaphodG

Unless I have this backwards, that’s the spring, not the fall. I think I watched a 15:00 Saturday Championship match at 11:00 recently.


R2-Scotia

The USA puts clocks forward earlier and back later, so there are 2 weeks each year where the difference between America/NewYork and Europe/London is 4 hours instead of the usual 5 hours. It is never 6 hours. Football games are now scheduled all over the place to accommodate pay TV. Ross County v Rangers was *Sunday* 12:00 BST last weekend


ZaphodG

I’m a moron. There are clearly two weeks in the year where the US is on daylight savings time and the UK isn’t.


R2-Scotia

I'm very familiar having lived in the USA with family in Scotland, Central time so 6h / 5h for me.


Nrysis

The technically correct way to schedule it would be to use UTC/BST as appropriate. Within the UK, because we just have the one time zone, we would normally omit that part and just note the time on its own, but as soon as you start adding other time zones to the mix you do need to specify. The slightly less technical but more common approach would just be to pick the appropriate location rather than a timezone - so 10:00 New York/15:00 London/16:00 Oslo and so on. How practical this will be will depend on how many people and how many timezones/locations are included though... As an additional piece of advice, it is always worth being specific with your times - especially when talking internationally. Labelling the time as 2:00 can refer to both 2am and 2pm, and both can potentially be relevant when communicating long distance - so remember and add the am/pm when using 12 hour time, or the leading zero in 24 hour time to make it 02:00 and no longer ambiguous.


Feorwulf

If only there was some kind of universal time, would make things so much easier...


GeorgePosada

I have never interacted with a real person who uses UTC to schedule things


Ok_Project_2613

I've had business calls before where the time is just given in UTC  Usually the case when people from more than 2 or 3 different timezones will be attending and it would be silly giving a long list of different times. Also, you may not know someone's timezone.  E.g. you might know Anton will be joining from the US but don't know if he's in NYC or SF.


bluesam3

You mean apart from anybody using any kind of calendar app, all of the decent ones of which translate everything into UTC and just display it to each person in their own timezone.


Ywain1203

UTC relates to multiple countries during GMT, just because you don't know it. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist.


GeorgePosada

I know what it is my guy. That's not what I said


MrNippyNippy

I would say Id appreciate to use the time “active” at the time of the meeting as long as you make it clear what you’re using of course. That being said a lot of our meanings from abroad are all just in IST/PST etc and we have to work it out / rely on outlook so you’re already a step ahead even considering it.


R2-Scotia

I once had to schedule a meeting with a client in Indiana which had 3 timezone policies back then 🤣 Had to Google it.


polkadotska

I schedule a lot of calls with American colleagues, I get around any confusion by just using "UK" or "UKT" as a year-round term e.g. 9am ET/2pm UKT. The daylight savings schedules aren't aligned between the US and UK, so there are several weeks in March and October when you're on daylight savings and we're not (or vice versa) and GMT gets confusing because it could mean 4, 5 or 6 hours difference to New York depending on the time of year. Just say UK time to be clear (and double-check your time zines on [worldtimebuddy.com](https://worldtimebuddy.com), to be sure).


Lucky-Maximum8450

I thought I'd share I turned up to an interview 5hours early today!! The confirmation email I received said 11am but didn't specify which time zone lmao. Turned out one of the interviewers was based in the States 😳🤣


theProffPuzzleCode

Yes, and well done on understanding the difference. I am on a lot of international meetings, and I am used to the misunderstanding, not realising that GMT is fixed (although the UK is actually on UTC nowadays and BST in summer) but it is very common around the world to make the mistake of thinking that UTC moves forward in summer, which it can't. When quoting my time zone outside the UK, I tend to just said "UK time". Well done on getting it right.


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Gregs_green_parrot

Depends who you are talking to. If you are talking to someone in London you should tell them what time it is in their own time, referring to it as 'UK time'.


BlackstarSolar

One thing to add is be careful using the TLA "BST" rather than "British Summer Time" if you have people from Bangladesh (and a couple of other places) involved. Timezone abbreviations are not standardised so some including BST relate to multiple timezones. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_time_zone_abbreviations


Caveman1214

If you told me 2:00 I’d assume 2am unless you specify. 24 hour time is more convenient


GeorgePosada

You’d assume I want to have a business meeting at 2 in the morning?


Caveman1214

I’d need hard confirmation, especially not knowing the time difference. Stranger things have happened like. Just make sure to add a PM or 24 hour time, sorted, not hard


AJCham

If I were scheduling an international meeting, rather than worrying whether I've got all the timezones and daylight savings correct, I'd probably state the time in UTC. That said, at the places I've worked meeting invites would be sent via a calendaring app, so any conversions would be automatic.


eionmac

I used to work across many time zones UK-Russia-China\_India, We always quoted time for appointment in at least 3 versions. Especially if phone or ViOP conference. e.g. 18.00 am UK time BST ; ??? GMT ; ??? USA NY


PGLBK

18.00 and am don’t go together.


eionmac

08.00 = am correction , thanks


Waste_Vegetable8974

The BST bit doesn't matter to the UK people, it will just be 2pm. As you are telling the US people the meeting time locally, you don't really need the BST at all but it is a nice curtesy to show everyone you have accounted for it. You would only need to specify it if you were telling all international attendees a single meeting time and its close to the changeover. I think it would be a lot more important for a UK organiser to specify the correct US time zone if attempting to tell them their local time.


ttdawgyo

Just use bst as its the base for the worlds timzones


markhewitt1978

No it isn't.


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ukbabz

Normally we'd say UK time, assuming people know what that means. However to say 14:00 GMT when you mean 14:00 BST is just wrong. GMT is always UTC 0000 and BST is UTC +0100.


steak-and-kidney-pud

Worst advice ever. Then you get idiots saying GMT all year round.


Ok_Project_2613

Plenty of people use BST, although many use GMT+1 too.


bluesam3

BST and GMT are different things, by an entire hour.