12:01AM pronounced as twelve zero one AM? Or twelve O one A M?

twelve O one A M...

There is usually a difference between reading a written or printed time out loud, and talking about time conversationally in a natural way. In fact this applies to other kinds of material with numerical digits which are not strictly numbers in the mathematical sense such as telephone "numbers" (the quotes are deliberate), bus routes, etc.

To say "twelve zero one AM" would be very precise and more suitable for a work situation whereas you might say "twelve oh one" to a friend. I would be more likely to say "one minute past midnight" to a friend.

In fact to avoid confusion, British transport operators, who use the 24 hour clock (that Americans call "military time") often represent midnight as "00:00" and would print that time as "00:01".

When I lived in London I used bus route 108 to visit my aunt in Catford and it was called route "one oh eight" by everybody. Also the 227 to Bromley was the "two two seven". The 68 was the "sixty eight" however. I think it changed at 100. I am talking about conversation here. Of course either way would be understood.

At school I was taught to say 3.005 as "three point zero zero zero five" but you hear people using "oh" instead of zero.

I have heard of Americans coming to Britain and not at first understanding telephone numbers quoted with "oh" for 0 digits. After 6 months they fall into line and start confusing their relatives back home.

In the early days of UK dial telephones, numbers in big cities had letters and numbers e.g. ABBey 1234 was on the Abbey exchange in London (dialled locally as ABB 1234) and on the phone dials the numbers and letters were arranged 1, 2 ABC, 3 DEF, 4 GHI, 5 JKL, 6 MN, 7 PRS, 8 TUV, 9 WXY, 0 O and the last digit was used on its own to call the operator, so because it is round it was naturally seen as the letter O (which is the first letter of "operator".

In Australia the emergency number for police, fire etc, is 000. Up until fairly recently just about everyone would say 'triple O', but with the advent of phones with letters as well as numbers, it has had to change to 'triple zero' to avoid confusion, especially when teaching kids what to do in an emergency.

But it amazes me how many people still say 'tripleO', I actually heard one of our local volunteer fire fighters say it the other day.

I think we did about the same, except sometimes we said Operator Oh, to distinguish it from the letter O.

In Britain, landline phones with rotary dials used to have letters, as I showed above, then they went away, with the advent of "all-figure numbers" around 1970 or so, but now with mobiles they have come back again, but O and zero are now in different places. Both my mobile, and I just noticed, my cordless landline handset, have MNO on the button with the 6 digit.

British phone books used to have a section "What to do in an emergency", complete with diagrams showing a manicured ladies finger, which taught how to dial 999 in the dark or when there is lots of smoke - "place the index finger in the last hole but one of the dial" etc.

In Britain they were the same.

In Canada, you would say 12 Oh 1 or a minute past the hour/midnight in a casual conversation. Zero zero zero one hours would be said when using military time. At least, that's what we call it.

One too many word "zero"s there.

'Cause people at work are thick?

Certainly some of them are, at least where I work, (me most of all!) or if not, at the other end of a weird sounding digital phone connection. Sometimes it is important to avoid misunderstanding: in my job we are supposed to use the phonetic alphabet over the phone (Charlie Oscar November Tango Romeo Echo X-Ray) but hardly anyone ever does.