HSBC Saving Account & Dual Banking

I have various accounts at nine different banks, in four different countries, (including HSBC offices in three separate countries). That may be a bit of an exception, but I don't think is at all unusual for people to have their money deposited with two or three different banks. In fact in the current economic climate it makes good sense not to put all your eggs in one basket. I guess the guy at HSBC was having a bad day.

Chris

12pm eh, when is that exactly? :-)

Noon, of course. Why?

12.30 pm doesn't mean twelve and a half hours after mid-day, just as 11.30am doesn't mean eleven and a half hours before mid-day.

The day is divided into two halves, before and after mid-day. An "am" time lies in the "before" half, a "pm" time in the "after" half.

Strictly speaking, noon itself is neither before noon nor after noon, and therefore neither am nor pm, but for practical purposes it makes sense to define noon to be either 12am or 12pm, or equivalently, to define 12pm to mean either noon or midnight.

In making that choice we should have regard for whether 12.00pm should mean half an hour after 11.30pm or half an hour before

12.30pm. I suggest the latter makes more practical sense. We should remember that it would be more logical not to have a 12 at all, but a zero instead, a practice we have adopted for the 24-hour clock.

12pm means 12 post meridian, the "meridian" in question is midday. Thus 12pm makes little sense, it's impossible to tell whether it means midday or midnight. 2pm means "two o'clock, after the meridian" (or *possibly* "2 hours after the meridian) and it's unambiguous. However 12pm doesn't work the same, it's either "12 o'clock, after the meridian" which makes little sense because 12 o'clock *is* the meridian (or it's midnight, in which case is it before the meridian or after the meridian). Alternatively if you go for the "12 hours after the meridian" meaning it's midnight which is (presumably) not what you meant.

You're effectively saying "12 o'clock in the afternoon" - think about it!

It's "meridiem" meaning midday and not "meridian", which is a great circle through the poles, such as the prime meridian which is the circle through Greenwich and along the International Date Line (apart from those wiggly bits that were set by politicians).

Tony

As Mr Gold has pointed out it's "meridiem", which means "middle of the day" [after "dies" = "the day", "diem" = "of the day" (ablative)].

Of course it's impossible to tell, if you use the strict meaning of "post meridiem" which means "after the middle of the day", because noon *is* the middle of the day, and therefore neither after nor before it.

Yes, but no to the "possibly" bit, because then 2am would be ambiguous, having to mean either "two o'clock, before meridiem" or "2 hours before meridiem" which are not the same times.

Quite so. If we want 12am and 12pm to make sense (to have a meaning), then it is necessary to *give* them meaning by making a definition (in principle an arbitrary one). The choice, as I explained earlier, is between, on the one hand, defining 12pm to mean noon and 12am to mean midnight, and on the other hand defining 12pm to mean midnight and 12am to mean noon. The former seems more reasonable than the latter, on the grounds that it makes more sense for 12.00pm to be

1 minute before 12.01pm (which you must surely agree is indeed in the afternoon) than for it to be one minute after 11.59pm.

I know, I've addressed this issue.

Oops, so it is, so much for my Latin education (it was a long time ago).

As you say, there's a choice - and there's no real way to decide which 'choice' you've made. Hence it's much better simply to say midday, or even 12:00 which makes a whole lot more sense than 12pm to my mind.

I don't see why really.

Fair enough.

No, because 12:00 is also ambiguous. You can;t tell whether you're using the 24-hour clock or not.

Because 12 really means 0, and then XX.YYpm means XX hours and YY minutes from the moment at which the afternoon begins (which it does at noon), and similarly XX.YYam means XXh and YYm from the moment the forenoon begins (which it does at midnight).

The day starts at 0:00. That is before mid-day, so it is 12:00 am. Therefore 12:00pm is mid day. And most of the time the clock spends at

12:00pm is after the point when mid-day occurs anyway.

wrote

If 12:00:00pm was midnight, what time would it be a second later? 12:00:01pm?

"Tim" wrote

But if it was 12:00:01am one second after 12:00:00pm, and half-a-second after 12:00:00pm was 12:00:0.5am, then at what time would it actually become 'am' rather than 'pm'?

And why is the second before 12:00:00am midnight not 11:59:59am?

12:00pm meaning noon and 12:00am meaning midnight are popular conventions but those are neither based on, nor proven by, arithmetical analysis.

Tony

"Anthony R. Gold" wrote

Well, obviously, because the time chosen at which the 'am' and 'pm' indicators change, is on the hour.

Otherwise, when exactly do you think the 'am' / 'pm' indicator would change - if not at 12:00?

"Anthony R. Gold" wrote

The convention is merely that the 'am' / 'pm' indicator changes **on the hour**.

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

Would it not be even better, even for the

12-hour clock, to have *both* a zero *and* a 12?

That way, we could say 0 is midnight &

12 is midday and easily avoid all confusion.

It would create more confusion than it would avoid. I take it you mean:

00am = midnight 12am = noon 00pm = noon 12pm = midnight

That's a perfectly reasonable convention, but once you then add minutes you get the problem that early lunchtime could be expressed both as 00.30pm, which is fine, and also as 12.30am, and this would be a time which isn't actually ante meridiem at all.

At least with the 24 hour clock there can be no confusion even when expressing absurdish times like Tuesday 2530, which although technically the same as Wednesday 0130, is informally more accurate as it describes a time before you've gone to bed.

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

Only if you did it the way you suggest below!!

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

Nope, not at all... I mean 00 is midnight (you can add the am indicator if you like, but it wouldn't be necessary; it would be "wrong" to add the pm indicator), and 12 is midday (you can add the pm indicator if you like, but again it wouldn't be necessary; it would be "wrong" to add the am indicator).

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

No, I would suggest that 12:30pm is the only allowed expression here. [Or perhaps just 12:30, without the 'pm', as it wouldn't be ambiguous.]

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

What time do you think I go to bed? ;-)

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

Close, but both post (after) and ante (before) are followed by the accusative case rather than the ablative.

Phil

Back to the original question :)

It's not that unusual - we do something similiar with other banks. Perhaps it's just an HSBC thing? I banked with them for 16 years but had to change as they were so useless. Their customer service was absolutely shameful. I won't bore you with the details but examples are available on request. :)

I'd recommend shopping around.

Cheers.