Telling time in English is easy once you understand how English speakers refer to different parts of the clock at different times of the day. It always follows the same pattern. So, once you know how it works, you can confidently announce the time at any time of the day or night.
You may know numbers in English, but you need more than numbers to tell time. You also need to be able to ask and answer questions about the time and talk about the clock in different life situations.
How do we tell the time?
When you tell the time in English, the hours always come first. If you look at the clock and see that it is three o’clock in the afternoon, then you can say“It’s three o’clock” or “The time is three o’clock“. It is that simple. Remember that when you are talking only about the hour, and not the minutes, then“o’clock” is usually used.
O’clock is an abbreviation of an old phrase meaning of the clock, and is something you can say after telling what time it is. However, it is only used when telling the time. If you need to include the minutes, then you can’t say “o’clock”.
Knowing morning, afternoon, evening, night and day.
In any part of the English-speaking world there are only twelve hours written on a clock. This may also be true in the region where you live. This is a very common system for telling time.
However, that means it will be 6:00 twice each day, once in the morning and once at night! So how do you talk about 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m.?
Morning (from 12:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.)
- 11:00 a.m. – It is eleven in the morning. It is eleven in the morning.
Afternoon (from 12:00 p.m. to sunset)
- 4:00 p.m. – It is four in the afternoon. It is four in the afternoon.
Evening (from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.)
- 6:00 p.m. – It is six in the evening. It is six in the evening.
Night (from 6:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m.)
- 10 p.m – it is ten in the night. It is 10 o’clock in the night.
As you can see, this differs from Spanish, as we use tarde for both afternoon and evening. However, we also use noon.
When minutes are involved 
There are many ways to tell the hour with minutes without saying the exact number, let’s start:
- Half and hour – half hour
And hour we know that it is an hour, therefore, half and hour will mean half an hour.
Example:
When he arrives?
- In half an hour he should arrive. It should arrive in half an hour.
- Quarter of an Hour – un quarto de hora
If half an hour means thirty minutes, a quarter of and hour will be 15 minutes.
You can use the term quarter of an hour in two different situations. For example, 7:45 is “a quarter to eight” and 8:15 is “a quarter past/after eight.
You can still say “quarter” if the number of minutes you have is between 12 and 17.
Example:
How much longer until 6?
- About a quarter of an hour. About fifteen minutes.
What time is it right now?
- A quarter to eleven. It is 10:45 am.
- Past and till
You can use them together with any combination of words about the weather. Which one you use depends on whether you are counting forward or backward.
6:30 can be 6:30 or you can also say it’s thirty minutes to 7. (Till is the more informal way of saying until, you can use either depending on the situation).
Example:
10:30 p.m. – Half past ten. / Thirty minutes till 11. Half past ten. / Half an hour to eleven o’clock.
11:30 a.m. – Half past eleven. / Thirty minutes to 12. Half past eleven. / It’s half an hour to noon.
I hope this helps you. Timing is very important and we hope you will feel more confident and comfortable applying these easy tips in English. What time is it?
