How to write times?

[ThisAdamGuy]

The past few chapters of my WIP need the characters to keep track of the time, but no matter how I write it out, it looks clunky. How do you do it?

"It's nine fifteen."
"It's 9:15."
"It's five til seven."
"It's 6:55."
"It's six fifty five."
"It's three o'clock."
"It's 3:00."

 

[CharlesEBrown]

According to my spell-check, in most cases it seems like it should be hyphenated like six-fifty-five.
In dialogue, though "quarter to seven" or "nine fifteen" is probably right.

Only use actual numbers for weird stuff, like a breakdown into decimals (like: 21:23:05.27) or for a block of text with other numbers in it (partly because AI readers will come up with VERY amusing results if you don't type them out, but also because there is a "writing standard" that "simple" numbers are always spelled out and only complicated or very large ones are written as numerics).

Not sure if there is a standard for military numbers - it seems to be spelled out "oh-four-hundred" if before noon, but "21:15" after for some strange reason.

 

[Ruti]

The past few chapters of my WIP need the characters to keep track of the time, but no matter how I write it out, it looks clunky. How do you do it?

Try using in world ways of saying time in fancy manners (not sure the kind of world your novel is in)
so like, its half past noon (12:30), its a quarter till evening (5:45 not sure on that one), etc.

in otherwords, use the more complicated ways of saying time if the specifics of the timeframe isn't necessary

 

[ThrillingHuman]

Use numbers. Whether it's for tension or for the purpose of attracting attention, numbers stand out from the line and are very succinct.