A language-based case for permanent standard time

The US Senate has just passed a bill making Daylight [Savings] Time (DT) permanent year-round, which of course also prohibits Standard Time (ST) year-round, in a laudable by misguided effort to prevent the twice annual adjustment of all of our clocks. While of course we have no basic right to prevent permanent DT, I argue that there are strong linguistic arguments against it. In what follows, I will sometime use 24-hour time (HH:MM, i.e, the number of hours HH and minutes MM since midnight) to prevent ambiguity.

Consider, for example, the English words noon (or midday) and midnight. These words do not mean 12:00 or 00:00 hours. Instead, they refer to the changing alignment of the sun with the earth throughout the day. Noon/midday is the time when the sun is perceived to be directly overhead, whereas midnight is the time halfway between successive noons.

We use this solar terminology to help disambiguate the 12-hour clock: antemeridian (a.m.), “before noon”, is used for the first half-day, and postmeridian (p.m.), “after noon” (or afternoon), is used for the second half-day. We also sometimes see 12 n. (twelve noon) and 12 m. (twelve midnight) to disambiguate 12:00 from 00:00; more frequently we see 12 p.m. for noon and 12 a.m. for midnight.

When ST is the norm, this all makes sense and is coherent, since the various time zones allow a rough equivalence between the sun’s position and the time system. A temporary DT rule disturbs that coherence, but since it is temporary and always defined as a pragmatic adjustment of ST, this does little permanent damage to the concord between nature and our system of time-telling.

However, a permanent DT law would tend to break the connection between the movement of the sun and our clocks. Noon (at least insofar as defined conventionally in terms of solar movement) would occur at 13:00 and midnight at 01:00. By extension, antemeridian and postmeridian would either lose their meaningful connection to the sun altogether, or morning time would go

10 a.m., 11 a.m., 12 a.m., 1 p.m. (or 1 n.), 2 p.m., etc.

and evening time would go

10 p.m., 11 p.m., 12 p.m., 1 a.m. (or 1 m.), 2 a.m., etc.

People say that DT gives us more sun in the evening (and by extension, less sun in the morning). We can disagree about whether this would be a good thing or a bad thing, but we can’t disagree that our understandings of evening, dusk, twilight, and so on have to do with the span of time between sunset and total darkness, just as our understandings of morning, dawn, daybreak, and so on have to do with the span of time between sunrise and full light. Therefore, DT doesn’t give us more sun in the evening or less sun in the morning, it just distorts the connection between clock time versus evening and morning.

There is a conventional understanding that on average, evening starts around 6 p.m. and morning starts around 6 a.m., because those hours split the different between 00:00 and 12:00, and they provide a useful anchor as we move through the year and the length of the day changes, always centered around noon. This can easily be seen on an analog clock dial. But with permanent DT, this convention would immediately become unbalanced and much less useful: evening would begin around 7 p.m. and morning would begin around 7 a.m. True, those hours do split the time between 13:00 and 01:00, but that is arbitrary in a way that the traditional system is not.

A useful way to see the ugliness of the proposed change is to imagine what a “permanent DT” clock dial would look like, with noon/midnight at the top and evening/morning at the bottom:

Finally, there is no reason to break the ancient connection of our time system to nature, if all we want to do is have more daylight after work and after school: we can do this completely in the domain of arbitrary human rules regarding work hours and school hours. Instead of “working nine to five”, why not work from eight to four? This would produce the desired effect — exactly the same as permanent DT — but without destroying the ancient language of time and its connections to the natural world.

So, in addition to the potential deleterious effects to the human body (not discussed here) caused by distorting natural circadian rhythm, please let’s consider the heaping spoonful of stinking illogic that permanent Daylight Time would force our innocent children and adults to swallow, and instead restore permanent standard time.

(Image adapted from https://pixfeeds.com/images/misc/elements/clock/1280-27603305.jpg)