How to Say Military Time (and Write It)
How each time is said out loud, what the Army, Navy and FAA manuals say, 0000 or 2400, and how military time is written.
In military time, a time is usually said as two numbers: first the hour, then the minutes. 1730 is “seventeen thirty”, and 0800 is “zero eight hundred”. Type any time to see how it is said; where your device has a voice, press “Hear it” to hear it.
- Say it
- “zero seven forty-five”, informally “oh seven forty-five” (common usage; no manual spells out 0000 to 0059)
- 24-hour clock
- 07:45
The hour, then the minutes
- Say the hour as one number and the minutes as another: 2315 is “twenty-three fifteen”. The Navy’s training manual puts it simply: “Time is spoken in hundreds.”
- On the hour, say “hundred”: 2000 is “twenty hundred”.
- Say the leading zero: 0100 is “zero one hundred”. You may also hear “oh one hundred”, but the manuals say “zero”.
- Minutes from 01 to 09 keep their zero, by common usage: 0905 is “zero nine zero five”.
- When speaking, “hours” is often added: an Army manual gives 1500Z as “fifteen hundred hours Zulu time”.
Examples
- 0000“zero hundred”12:00 AM
- 0030“zero zero thirty”12:30 AM
- 0100“zero one hundred” or “oh one hundred”1:00 AM
- 0645“zero six forty-five” or “oh six forty-five”6:45 AM
- 0700“zero seven hundred” or “oh seven hundred”7:00 AM
- 0905“zero nine zero five” or “oh nine oh five”9:05 AM
- 1000“ten hundred”10:00 AM
- 1200“twelve hundred”12:00 PM
- 1215“twelve fifteen”12:15 PM
- 1300“thirteen hundred”1:00 PM
- 1730“seventeen thirty”5:30 PM
- 2000“twenty hundred”8:00 PM
- 2045“twenty forty-five”8:45 PM
- 2359“twenty-three fifty-nine”11:59 PM
No manual we found spells out the times from 0001 to 0059. “Zero zero thirty” for 0030 is common usage, and so is “zero hundred” for 0000.
On the radio: digit by digit
Pilots and radio operators often say each digit on its own, so that nothing is misheard. The FAA’s Aeronautical Information Manual gives 0920 as “zero niner two zero” and 0000 as “zero zero zero zero”; “niner” is the radio word for 9. Allied radio rules also switch to single digits when conditions are poor, and always use them for a formal date-time group.
Midnight: 0000 or 2400?
Both are midnight. 2400 on Monday is the same moment as 0000 on Tuesday. But the official sources differ on which one to write:
- NIST, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, suggests writing 11:59 p.m. or 12:01 a.m. to avoid confusion, or else 0000 for midnight at the start of a day and 2400 for its end. The Navy’s training manual uses 0000 and 2400 the same way.
- The Army’s correspondence rules (AR 25-50) count the day from 0001 to 2400; another Army manual (ATP 6-02.70) counts it from 0000 to 2359.
- The Navy’s correspondence manual (SECNAV M-5216.5) said 0001 to 2400 until 2015, and has said 0000 to 2359 since.
- Allied message rules (ACP 121) avoid 2400 where they can, writing 2359 or 0001, and use 0000 only with a fraction of a minute (0000.5).
If you write for an organization, follow its own rule.
NIST also calls 12 a.m. and 12 p.m. ambiguous. Like most clocks, this site writes 12:00 AM for midnight and 12:00 PM for noon, with the military time beside it.
How military time is written
- Always four digits, with a leading zero: 0630, not 630.
- No colon and no AM or PM: 1545, not 15:45 or 3:45 PM.
- No “hours” in writing: the Army and the Air Force both say to leave it out.
- A time zone letter can follow right after the digits: 1535Z is 3:35 PM in Zulu time (UTC). See military time zones.
Sources
- U.S. Navy, NAVEDTRA 14325, Basic Military Requirements (2002), chapter 3, “Military Time”.
- U.S. Army, ATP 6-02.70, Techniques for Spectrum Management Operations (2015), Appendix E.
- Combined Communications-Electronics Board, ACP 125(G), Radiotelephone Procedures (2016), table 3-3 and paragraph 310.
- Federal Aviation Administration, Aeronautical Information Manual, paragraph 4-2-12, “Time”.
- National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), “Times of Day FAQs”.
- Department of the Army, AR 25-50, Preparing and Managing Correspondence (2020), paragraph 1-26, “Expressing time”.
- Department of the Navy, SECNAV M-5216.5, Correspondence Manual, March 2010 and June 2015 editions, chapter 2, paragraph 15, “Expressing Military Time”.
- Combined Communications-Electronics Board, ACP 121(I), Communication Instructions General (2010), paragraphs 326 and 327.
- U.S. Air Force, AFH 33-337, The Tongue and Quill (2015), pages 304 and 360.
All read October 26 and 27, 2026.