AGLC4 Rule 1.11.2: Time

A time is written with hours, minutes and seconds separated by colons and followed by am or pm without a space. Minutes and seconds may be left out when not needed but are two digits when used, and footnote citations give at least hours and minutes. A time zone may be added where relevant or needed to avoid confusion, and in a citation the time follows the date after a comma. Other styles, including 24 hour times, may be used in the body.

AGLC4 page 31

Format

Quoted from the Guide, page 31
Hour:Minute:Secondam/pm

A boxed element is filled in with the source's details; everything outside a box is written exactly as shown.

Formatting

  • Colons between hours, minutes and seconds, with no spaces.
  • "am" or "pm" in lower case, attached to the time with no space and no full stops.
  • Minutes and seconds, when present, are always two digits.
  • In footnote citations include at least the hour and minutes.
  • In a citation the date comes first, then a comma and a space, then the time.
  • A time zone abbreviation follows the time after one space.
  • A weekday followed directly by a time, with no date, takes a comma after the weekday.
  • 24 hour times are four digits with a colon between hours and minutes.

In the text

She was told that they would arrive on Wednesday 22 December 2012, 12am AEDT. They left on Thursday, 7:05pm AEST.

The next morning, sometime after 08:00 hours, a few POWs succeeded in breaking out … At 08:55, Lieutenant …

Quoted from the Guide, page 31

Forms in the rule

Quoted from the Guide, page 31
  • ‘1 January 2019, 12:01am’
  • ‘13:00’
  • Wednesday 22 December 2012, 12am AEDT
  • Thursday, 7:05pm AEST

See also

Check your footnotes against these rules

Paste your paper into the free AGLC4 checker and each footnote is graded against the Guide, with the rule it breaks. To write a citation from scratch, use the AGLC4 citation generator.

AGLC4 citation checker AGLC4 citation generator

Formats, examples, passages, tables and the forms marked Not are quoted from the Australian Guide to Legal Citation (4th ed, Melbourne University Law Review Association, 2018), with the page of the Guide they appear on. Titles, summaries and explanations are our own.