ClockHubClockHubtwenty-two thirty
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. 2230 therefore means 22 hours and 30 minutes past midnight — 10:30 PM on a 12-hour clock.
Read aloud it becomes "twenty-two thirty". 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. 2230 sits on the PM side of that line, which is why it converts to 10:30 PM.
Going the other way is the same arithmetic in reverse. Take 10 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. 10:30 PM becomes 2230.
| Military | Standard | Spoken |
|---|---|---|
| 0000 | 12:00 AM | zero hundred |
| 2100 | 9:00 PM | twenty-one hundred |
| 2110 | 9:10 PM | twenty-one ten |
| 2115 | 9:15 PM | twenty-one fifteen |
| 2120 | 9:20 PM | twenty-one twenty |
| 2130 | 9:30 PM | twenty-one thirty |
| 2140 | 9:40 PM | twenty-one forty |
| 2145 | 9:45 PM | twenty-one forty-five |
| 2200 | 10:00 PM | twenty-two hundred |
| 2215 | 10:15 PM | twenty-two fifteen |
| 2230 | 10:30 PM | twenty-two thirty |
| 2300 | 11:00 PM | twenty-three hundred |
| 2330 | 11:30 PM | twenty-three thirty |