Poll of idle curiosity

[sally_maria]

After a couple of misunderstandings over the last few months, I thought it might be interesting to find out whether this was an individual or cultural thing.

Poll #7141

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 12

View Respondents

If I were to say something will last until the 31st May what would you think I meant?

View Answers

That it will stop at the beginning of the 31st.
0 (0.0%)

That it will stop at some point in the day, maybe at close of business.
3 (25.0%)

That it will stop at the end of the 31st.
9 (75.0%)

Something else that I will explain in a comment.
0 (0.0%)

If I refer to midnight on the 31st May, which do I mean?

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The boundary between 30th May and the 31st
2 (16.7%)

The boundary between 31st May and the 1st June.
10 (83.3%)

Is midnight?

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The beginning of the day.
1 (8.3%)

The end of the day.
9 (75.0%)

Something else that I will explain in a comment.
2 (16.7%)

Where are you from?

View Answers

Britain
8 (66.7%)

North America
2 (16.7%)

Europe
1 (8.3%)

The Rest of the World ;-)
1 (8.3%)

It's Complicated
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[james]

Midnight is both beginning and end; I worked overnight for years and midnight was about an hour before lunchtime. ;-)

[sally_maria]

:-) That's definitely a good point.

It can be a very arbitrary point - after all, I think for a lot of us the day ends when we go to bed.

[crazyscot]

Midnight is horribly poorly defined. What is it - the minute 00:00? The second 00:00:00? The instant where the clock turns from 23:59:59 (or 23:59:60 if there's a leap second) to 00:00:00 and the chiming clocks strike their first of twelve? In the latter case it's an interstitial, existing in neither day.

So many people use the term midnight with either meaning that I'm inclined to believe nothing. I note that car insurance often gets around this with wording like "cover begins at 0:01 on [date]".

My dad had (possibly still has) a digital clock that went from 23:59 to 24:00 to 0:01...

[sally_maria]

Yes, I agree. I think that's one of the things that causes the confusion.

Apart from anything else, it seems fairly clear from the answers on the polls here and on LJ that most people think of midnight as being the end of the day, and yet it's also 0.00 hours, which logically ought to be the beginning.

I did wonder if it was a cross-Atlantic difference, but there's no evidence of that at the moment.