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Do I need to say “o’clock” after each time? Tell me, please, how to pronounce the following sentence:

From 9.00 to 10.00 - registration of conference participants

And how to say:

From 12.00 - to 14.00

whiskeychief
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Влад Глушко
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2 Answers2

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No. When it is clear you are talking about a time (as it is here) "o'clock" is optional, and often omitted.

So "From 9 to 10" would be the common way of reading that.

Your second example is most commonly "From 12 to 2".

Colin Fine
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    I agree that in a schedule they are likely to be written "from 9:00 to 10:00", but pronounced "from 9 to 10". In a schedule anywhere outside the US, they are likely to use a 24 hour clock, not a.m. and p.m. – Colin Fine May 12 '19 at 22:49
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    I agree that you could just say "from nine to ten".

    You could also say "from nine to ten o'clock", with the "o'clock" implicitly applying to both. I might say that (instead of "from nine to ten"), if I wanted to make clear that I'm talking about times. If one of them has minutes, that implies that they are times, so you could normally leave off the "o'clock" from the other one: "from nine-thirty to ten", or "from ten to eleven-thirty".

    It's also ok to say "o'clock" when it's not needed, like "from nine o'clock to ten o'clock", "from nine o'clock to ten thirty", but it sounds more formal.

     – Glenn Willen May 13 '19 at 02:06
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    @GlennWillen You can also use the "o'clock" for emphasis of punctuality: "be here at 9" is far more casual about the time than "be here at 9 o'clock" or "be here on the dot of 9" (the latter implying that even 09:01 is too late!) – Chronocidal May 13 '19 at 07:56
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    I would add to this - certainly where I live, it would be more common to say "from 9 until 10", or "from 9 'til 10". If you say "from 10 to 11", it can create confusion over whether you mean starting at 10:00 and ending at 11:00, or starting at 10:50... – Chronocidal May 13 '19 at 08:03
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    In the UK, I don't think I've ever heard anyone say "fourteen" for a time. It would always be "2pm" or (since 2am is very unsociable) just "2 (o'clock)". You could explicitly say "2am" to emphasize a very early or late time. – Chris Petheram May 13 '19 at 12:56
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    @GlennWillen In the UK (or at least the small part of England that I've lived in), saying "ten to eleven" when the time is 10:50 would be extremely common ("ten minutes to eleven" would sound oddly formal). Context has always been sufficient to differentiate that from the time period between 10:00 and 11:00. – Anthony Grist May 13 '19 at 15:41
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    /me sings Dolly Parton's hit song Nine to Five and smiles. – Monty Harder May 13 '19 at 17:26
  • @MontyHarder I went straight to "twenty-five or six to four" by Chicago which is fairly hard to recognize as a time if you are just listening to the song without any context. I didn't realize it was a time for years. – Bill K May 13 '19 at 21:15
  • @Chronocidal I've never heard "o'clock" used to emphasize punctuality before; "9 on the dot" is common, but "be here at 9" and "be here at 9 o'clock" are exactly the same semantically, at least in my vernacular. – Kristen Hammack May 13 '19 at 21:22
  • @BillK Huge Chicago fan here I should have thought of that too, but like you I was confused. For a long time, I thought it was "25 (years old) or 6 (minutes) to 4 (am)", comparing "what time is it (in my life/in the day)" before realizing it's really "25 or (2)6 (minutes)..." – Monty Harder May 14 '19 at 15:27
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In the US, 14:00 is typically only used by the military (and would be said "fourteen hundred" or sometimes "fourteen hundred hours", while 9:00 would be "oh nine hundred:). For civilians, it would be said "twelve to two" or "noon to two" with "PM" (usually uppercase) added if there's possible confusion about the event lasting until 2:00 AM.

In a written schedule, it could most efficiently be written "9:00 - 10:00" and "12:00 - 2:00", with the ":00" possibly omitted if everything starts on the hour.

jamesqf
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  • The armed forces has their own lingo. Doing something by Yankee time means you are effing late. ASAP Yankee, meant not now, but NOW, DAMMIT! – Stian May 13 '19 at 06:32
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    Speaking the words 'ten TO two' is equally likely to cause confusion! 'Ten TILL two' makes more sense. – Tim May 13 '19 at 08:30
  • In a program schedule for a conference, you will most definitely have am and pm written out. The 24-hour thing is irrelevant to the question in any case. – Lambie May 13 '19 at 13:14
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    @Tim I hear "from ten to two", meaning starting at 10am and ending at 2pm, pretty much every day. In the US, I think "till/'til" is fairly uncommon (today - it was more common in the past). jamesqf - note that when military, airline, etc. 24 hour time is used in the US, it's most proper to omit the colon, as in "1400" or "0900". – Todd Wilcox May 13 '19 at 13:43
  • @ToddWilcox - my problem with that is can be misconstrued as 'from one fifty' (ten mins to two o'clock) As often happens, the pond's got in the way..! – Tim May 13 '19 at 15:07
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    @Tim: It can't be interpreted as "from one fifty" because then there's no second time. You would have an open-ended time period, and by context it's obvious that's not what is intended. – Kevin May 13 '19 at 17:50
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    @Tim - on an English language learning site, I would steer clear of advising the use of abbreviations. If you think "to" is ambiguous, use "until" (not "till" - which means a cash register). – Chris Melville May 13 '19 at 18:30
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    @Chris Melville: Well, MAYBE it means a cash register. Could be the rocks & dirt left behind by a glacier, or the act of preparing soil for planting, or... – jamesqf May 14 '19 at 05:02
  • @jamesqf - Very true. You're a pedant... and I like it :) – Chris Melville May 14 '19 at 11:09