How to use the online alarm clock
Midday carries more weight in Britain than its neighbours on either side. Property completions are conventionally set for noon, so keys change hands at twelve and removal vans are booked around it. Prime Minister's Questions begins at twelve on a Wednesday when the Commons is sitting. Auctions, deadlines and closing dates for applications all cluster at the same point.
It is also the hour with the worst notation problem on the clock. Noon is written 12:00 pm and midnight 12:00 am, which is the opposite of what most people guess, and a deadline described as twelve o'clock without further explanation has caused more missed submissions than any other time of day. Naming the minute outright, as these pages do, avoids the argument entirely.
For everyone else it is simply lunch: schools, sites and offices break somewhere in this hour, and a midday alarm is often a way of making sure the break actually happens. Sixty individual pages cover 12:00 pm through to 12:59 pm.
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