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In Spain, date notation follows the DD/MM/YYYY format. Time notation depends on the level of formality and varies in written and spoken formats. Official time is given using the 24-hour clock, and the 12-hour clock is often used in informal speech.
"Seis de diciembre de mil novecientos setenta y ocho"(formal, legal)
"Seis de diciembre del setenta y ocho"(informal, two-digit year abbreviation)
6 December 1978, date of the 1978 Spanish constitutional referendum
In Spain, the date order is invariably day, month, year. In abbreviated notation, Roman numerals are sometimes used to represent months. A slash, a hyphen or occasionally a full stop can be used to separate the units of time.
Years are often notated in two-digit format in mainly informal contexts where this would not cause confusion, such as handwritten letters, notes or diaries. Official documents, however, always include all four digits.
In Spanish, the suffixes for BC and AD are "AC" (antes de Cristo, "before Christ") and "DC" (después de Cristo, "after Christ"), respectively. "AD" for "Anno Domini" in Latin is sometimes used instead of "DC", but it is rare. "DC" is commonly omitted for years after 200 CE.
Leading zeroes are rare, and are more frequently used in the months column: 21/04/1980 to allow for consistency in a tabular format. The format 02/04/1980 is more commonplace in automated output, such as tickets, forms, etc.
Names of months and weekdays are written in lower case, as they are considered common nouns rather than proper nouns , except at the start of a sentence, when they are capitalized following the regular rules of Spanish. Exceptions include some specific Catholic holy dates, such as Miércoles de Ceniza ("Ash Wednesday") or Domingo de Resurrección ("Resurrection Sunday"), which are always written in upper case letters.
In Spanish, abbreviations of month names are usually three letters long, to avoid confusion between marzo (March) and mayo (May), and between junio (June) and julio (July).
In Spain, the week runs from Monday to Sunday. The Spanish language also has an established convention for days of the week using one letter. These are: L – lunes (Monday); M – martes (Tuesday); X – miércoles (Wednesday); J – jueves (Thursday); V – viernes (Friday), S – sábado (Saturday); and D – domingo (Sunday). Each day of the week is written using its first letter except Wednesday, which is represented by the letter X in order to avoid confusion between martes (Tuesday) and miércoles (Wednesday), which both begin with an m. Some public vehicles, such as taxicabs, attach a letter to their vehicle to denote the driver's weekly day off.
| Common names for hours in Spanish | ||
|---|---|---|
| Time | Hour name | Common suffix |
| 00:00 | Las doce | de la noche |
| 01:00 | La una | de la madrugada |
| 05:00 | Las cinco | |
| 06:00 | Las seis | de la mañana |
| 11:00 | Las once | |
| 12:00 | Las doce | del mediodía |
| 13:00 | La una | de la tarde |
| 20:00 | Las ocho | |
| 21:00 | Las nueve | de la noche |
| 23:00 | Las once | |
Official time is always given in 24-hour format. A full stop was originally used to separate the hours and minutes (18.20). Whilst this method is still in use in some areas such as the press, the colon is preferred in most modern usage (18:20). The use of leading zeroes to mark the hour is optional (these zeroes are most commonly found in situations involving automation), but leading zeroes must be used to mark minutes and seconds, if seconds are included at all (e. g., 08:09:07). In speech, a time given in 24-hour format is always followed by the word horas: el concierto comenzará a las 15:30 "quince y treinta" horas ("the concert will start at 15:30").
Fractional seconds are given in decimal notation, with punctuation marks used to separate the units of time (full stop, comma or single quotation marks). For elapsed time, the letter "h" represents 'hours', a single quotation mark (') represents 'minutes' and a double quotation mark (") represents seconds: 8h 7' 46" means "eight hours, seven minutes and forty-six seconds have elapsed". In this instance, leading zeroes are not used. The letters "m" and "s" are occasionally used to denote minutes and seconds instead of the quotation marks: 8h 7m 46s.
| Common names for minutes in Spanish | ||
|---|---|---|
| Time | Hour name | Common minutes name |
| 00:00 | Las doce | en punto |
| 00:05 | y cinco | |
| 00:10 | y diez | |
| 00:15 | y cuarto | |
| 00:20 | y veinte | |
| 00:25 | y veinticinco | |
| 00:30 | y media | |
| 00:35 | La una | menos veinticinco |
| 00:40 | menos veinte | |
| 00:45 | menos cuarto | |
| 00:50 | menos diez | |
| 00:55 | menos cinco | |
In common spoken language, times are given using the 12-hour clock. After midnight, hours are labeled de la madrugada ("in the early morning"), which is used exclusively before sunrise, and de la mañana ("in the morning"), which can be used either before or after sunrise. Times after 12 noon are labeled de la tarde ("in the afternoon") before sunset and de la noche ("at night") after sunset. The system for minutes is similar to the one used in the English language, with hours expressed first, followed by minutes. The word y ("and") is used to denote minutes past or after the hour (e.g. las cinco y diez for "ten minutes past five"). If more than thirty minutes have elapsed since the last full hour, minutes to the hour are expressed using the word menos ("minus") (e.g. las diez menos cinco; "five minutes to ten"). As in English, the clock face is also split into four quarters: times exactly on the hour are expressed using en punto ("o'clock"); "quarter past" or "quarter after" is expressed using the phrase y cuarto; a time thirty minutes past the hour is expressed using the phrase y media ("half past" or "-thirty"); and a time 15 minutes before the hour is expressed using menos cuarto ("quarter to").
There are no traditional suffixes for ante meridiem and post meridiem in Spanish; "AM" and "PM" are used when writing the time in the 12-hour format, in any of their variations: "A.M./P.M.", "a.m./p.m.", "AM/PM", "am/pm", "a/p" etc. The suffix for ante meridiem is often omitted completely.
An hour is a unit of time conventionally reckoned as 1⁄24 of a day and scientifically reckoned between 3,599 and 3,601 seconds, depending on the speed of Earth's rotation. There are 60 minutes in an hour, and 24 hours in a day.
ISO 8601 is an international standard covering the worldwide exchange and communication of date and time-related data. It is maintained by the Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and was first published in 1988, with updates in 1991, 2000, 2004, and 2019, and an amendment in 2022. The standard provides a well-defined, unambiguous method of representing calendar dates and times in worldwide communications, especially to avoid misinterpreting numeric dates and times when such data is transferred between countries with different conventions for writing numeric dates and times.
The second is the unit of time in the International System of Units (SI), historically defined as 1⁄86400 of a day – this factor derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes and finally to 60 seconds each.
Sexagesimal, also known as base 60 or sexagenary, is a numeral system with sixty as its base. It originated with the ancient Sumerians in the 3rd millennium BC, was passed down to the ancient Babylonians, and is still used—in a modified form—for measuring time, angles, and geographic coordinates.
Noon is 12 o'clock in the daytime. It is written as 12 noon, 12:00 m., 12 p.m., 12 pm, or 12:00 or 1200 . Solar noon is the time when the Sun appears to contact the local celestial meridian. This is when the Sun reaches its apparent highest point in the sky, at 12 noon apparent solar time and can be observed using a sundial. The local or clock time of solar noon depends on the longitude and date, with Daylight Savings Time tending to place solar noon closer to 1:00pm.
The 12-hour clock is a time convention in which the 24 hours of the day are divided into two periods: a.m. and p.m.. Each period consists of 12 hours numbered: 12, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11.
The modern 24-hour clock, popularly referred to in the United States as militarytime, is the convention of timekeeping in which the day runs from midnight to midnight and is divided into 24 hours. This is indicated by the hours passed since midnight, from 0(:00) to 23(:59). This system, as opposed to the 12-hour clock, is the most commonly used time notation in the world today, and is used by the international standard ISO 8601.
The prime symbol ′, double prime symbol ″, triple prime symbol ‴, and quadruple prime symbol ⁗ are used to designate units and for other purposes in mathematics, science, linguistics and music.
Decimal time is the representation of the time of day using units which are decimally related. This term is often used specifically to refer to the time system used in France for a few years beginning in 1792 during the French Revolution, which divided the day into 10 decimal hours, each decimal hour into 100 decimal minutes and each decimal minute into 100 decimal seconds, as opposed to the more familiar UTC time standard, which divides the day into 24 hours, each hour into 60 minutes and each minute into 60 seconds.
A year zero does not exist in the Anno Domini (AD) calendar year system commonly used to number years in the Gregorian calendar ; in this system, the year 1 BC is followed directly by year AD 1. However, there is a year zero in both the astronomical year numbering system, and the ISO 8601:2004 system, the interchange standard for all calendar numbering systems. There is also a year zero in most Buddhist and Hindu calendars.
Different conventions exist around the world for date and time representation, both written and spoken.
France most commonly records the date using the day-month-year format with an oblique stroke or slash as the separator with numerical values. The 24-hour clock is used to express time, using the letter h as the separator in between hours and minutes.
Date and time notation in Sweden mostly follows the ISO 8601 standard: dates are generally written in the form YYYY-MM-DD. Although this format may be abbreviated in a number of ways, almost all Swedish date notations state the month between the year and the day. Months are not capitalised when written. The week number may also be used in writing and in speech. Times are generally written using 24-hour clock notation, with full stops as separators, although 12-hour clock notation is more frequently used in speech.
Date and time notation in the United Kingdom records the date using the day–month–year format. The ISO 8601 format (1999-12-31) is increasingly used for all-numeric dates. The time can be written using either the 24-hour clock (23:59) or the 12-hour clock (11:59 pm).
The European Committee for Standardization (CEN) and (CENELEC) adopted ISO 8601 with EN 28601, now EN ISO 8601. As a European Norm, CEN and CENELEC member states are obligated to adopt the standard as national standard without alterations as well.
The most formal manner of expressing the full date and/or time in South Korea is to suffix each of the year, month, day, ante/post-meridiem indicator, hour, minute and second with the corresponding unit and separating each with a space:
Date and time notation in Italy records the date using the day–month–year format. The time is written using the 24-hour clock (19:47); in spoken language and informal contexts the 12-hour clock is more commonly adopted, but without using "a.m." or "p.m." suffixes (7:47).
In Roman timekeeping, a day was divided into periods according to the available technology. Initially the day was divided into two parts: the ante meridiem and the post meridiem. With the advent of the sundial circa 263 BC, the period of the natural day from sunrise to sunset was divided into twelve hours.
Spain has two time zones and observes daylight saving time. Spain mainly uses CET (UTC+01:00) and CEST (UTC+02:00) in Peninsular Spain, the Balearic Islands, Ceuta, Melilla and plazas de soberanía. In the Canary Islands, the time zone is WET (UTC±00:00) and WEST (UTC+01:00). DST is observed from the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October throughout Spain.