Do you say “two fifteen” or “a quarter past two”? “Two thirty” or “Half past two”? “Two fifty” or “Ten to three”?

26 comments

1. all of the above interchangeably

2. I almost always give the exact time.

3. If I’m not being exact, I’ll use all of the above. Probably the least common for me would be “ten to three”, I’d just say “coming up on three” or something like that.

4. Usually “two thirty” (etc.)

   I never say “half past” but I do say “quarter to…” and “quarter after…” (not past) somewhat commonly.

5. I just give the exact time

6. Any and all of the above, as the mood strikes

7. I say all of the above but most commonly “quarter after” or “quarter til”

8. Depends if the clock I’m looking at is digital or analog.

9. I rarely use the weird system of fractions people love when talking about time. Hour + minute is clear and straight forward and reflects how people think about time in a world where everyone’s using digital clocks. I will say “in the morning” or “afternoon” instead of AM or PM, because those are stupid terms. And then people get confused by twelve o’clock so I always say “noon” or “midnight” for 12pm and 12am respectively. Honestly, its just kind of stupid no one thought to have a zero o’clock and so now we start counting at… twelve. Its a dumb system and I try to keep it simple to avoid scheduling mistakes.

10. Digital age. I give exact time.

11. Yes.

12. Two Fifteen, Two Thirty, and Two Fifty.

    I’ve never been the type to bother with halves, quarters, 5 or 10 past (or to), etc. I find saying the time directly makes things clear. The one exception I’ll make is if I’m not being precise about the time and I say “it’s a little after 6” or “it’s almost 7.”

13. Only really “two fifteen.” I never give any “__ passed __” or “__ til __” times. It feels more exact and easy to understand to just give the exact time.

14. I could be mistaken about this, but phrases like “quarter past, half past, quarter till” etc are things I tend to associate with older adults. I pretty much never say any of them, I just give the hour and the minute exactly.

15. “two fifteen”, “two thirty”, “two fifty”. Honestly I don’t hear the other ones much among the younger crowd.

16. I say what the time is. A quarter past or half past or 5 to x, while easy to deduce seems like unnecessary thinking for everyone involved

17. I always say the actual name for the time since for some reason my wife never learned the alternative references and gets confused if I use them.

18. People ask for the time, not riddles and math problems

19. Young people tend to give numeric digital time, e.g., 2:15, 2:50.

    Older people tend to give the geometric analog clock time, e.g. half past quarter off etc.

    In fact many young people don’t know how to read an analog clock and think saying “quarter of” is a riddle because they have to convert it to digital to understand it (and they don’t understand that older people don’t convert it).

20. I say all these things

21. i’ll add another one for you that’s my localization

    2:50 = “10 of 3”

22. 0215, 1415,…

    If someone says a quarter past, there is probably a quarter flying thru the air at that exact moment..,

23. Yes. I say all of those.

24. Yes, all of those.

25. I just give the time, it’s less confusing and less of a mouthful than then making it a fraction or whatever.

26. Huh I haven’t thought about it but I rarely use quarter/half/etc anymore. Someone mentioned it elsewhere, but it probably corresponds with digital vs analog clocks. If I’m reading a digital clock, I’ll give the exact time. Analog, the approximation.

    “Quarter of 3”
    “10 of two”
    (I’ll generally use “of” rather than “to” and “after” rather than “past”…. Except for the half is always “past”)

    Here’s another interesting one:
    I’ll still answer in the quarter/half phrasing of someone asks me when something will happen in the future, or when something just happened. But the quirk: within the same hour, I’ll just drop the hour

    “What time will dinner be ready?”
    “Quarter after”

    “When did the show start?”
    “Half past”