ClockHubClockHubeighteen hundred
Military time writes every hour of the day as a two-digit number from 00 to 23, then appends the minutes as two more digits. 1800 therefore means 18 hours and 00 minutes past midnight — 6:00 PM on a 12-hour clock.
Read aloud it becomes "eighteen hundred". A zero minutes value is spoken as "hundred", which is why whole hours end in "hundred"; minutes below ten take an "oh" in front, as in "seventeen oh five" for 1705.
Twelve-hour clocks split the day at noon. Hours 00 through 11 are AM, hours 12 through 23 are PM, and the two boundary hours are the ones people get wrong: 0000 is 12:00 AM and 1200 is 12:00 PM. 1800 sits on the PM side of that line, which is why it converts to 6:00 PM.
Going the other way is the same arithmetic in reverse. Take 6 and PM, drop the suffix, and add 12 to any PM hour — then watch the two twelve-o’clock cases, where 12 AM becomes 00 and 12 PM stays 12. 6:00 PM becomes 1800.
| Military | Standard | Spoken |
|---|---|---|
| 1700 | 5:00 PM | seventeen hundred |
| 1715 | 5:15 PM | seventeen fifteen |
| 1730 | 5:30 PM | seventeen thirty |
| 1740 | 5:40 PM | seventeen forty |
| 1745 | 5:45 PM | seventeen forty-five |
| 1800 | 6:00 PM | eighteen hundred |
| 1815 | 6:15 PM | eighteen fifteen |
| 1820 | 6:20 PM | eighteen twenty |
| 1830 | 6:30 PM | eighteen thirty |
| 1840 | 6:40 PM | eighteen forty |
| 1845 | 6:45 PM | eighteen forty-five |
| 1900 | 7:00 PM | nineteen hundred |