Open Forum → Can you use ' to denote minute in time

Or is it specifically reserved for thd degree, minute, second sytem?

The reason I ask -- at work someone had put down 20' on the board to denote time and a lot of people understood it as feet. I kind of laughed, but is it improper enought o not be done? Or doesn't it really matter?

I would be a little worried about the people thinking 20 feet is related to time . As far as initials/symbols etc. regarding minutes, IMO IF you are to get paid for those minutes, and IF whoever does the paychecks doesn't allow a symbol to denote minute, hour...then it is probably a good idea not to use it if you want to get paid. Ultimately I don't think it matters as long as others know and use the same symbol.

I've seen it done before but it's quite uncommon. You could obviously only denote minutes and seconds or hours and minutes but not all three. I think I've seen it used both ways so you'd really have to know the context. Likewise if it's used as all you should be able to tell it isn't feet if it's used in the right context. But if someone just put 20' up on a board I guarantee you everyone in the room is going to assume 20 feet. If they put time to complete test: 20' then anyone who thinks it is feet is dumb. Even then you'd be a little out there to think it's 20 hours too, 20 minutes makes more sense. As I said it's all in the context of how it's used.

The symbol is a prime ′ (U+2032), not a single quote ', and is generally used to denote minutes in angles (as in 'degrees, minutes and seconds') or feet (measurement). But the use of the prime symbol to represent minutes in time is not unknown (for example, John Cage's 4′33″).

I have never seen it done that way - I usually see it with colons (:) to separate time and if it is only seconds then either 20 sec or 20 seconds - sometimes as :20 if the sentence made it obvious it was time of less than a minute..

Yah that's not the correct way to denote time.
As stated in previous posts. The minutes (') and seconds(") refer to a measurement of distance and not time.
Therefore, 45 degrees 23' 45" W is correct

The time is: 11 43' 56" is incorrect.

' has been feet to me for 58 years now.
I would use 10:30 and thats it.
So the : would be the denote to minutes you should have done 00:30 for 30 minutes.

This page shows YOU how both Military time and Regular time is written.
»www.spacearchive.info/mi ··· tary.htm

Sorry YOU can't change it.

As in Longitude and Latitude? Correct?
That where I've seen it used before.

I've also seen it used to denote minutes and seconds of time, but I don't think that's proper.

The ' and " are commonly used in engineering drawings to denote the minutes and seconds of a degree of an arc, or angle (IE; a single degree of arc/angle is subdivided into 60 minutes and each minute of arc is subdivided into 60 seconds).

Ya know, while were on the subject of that I have a question. OK I understand that 45° 23' 45" W means start at the 45° line and go west for 23 minutes and 45 seconds. But go west at what speed? I can walk and get to one point, I can run and get to another or I can drive ans get to several others depending on traffic patterns lol. Or an I even right about the "go west 23 minutes 45 seconds" part?

NM

Interesting, so it's the same way wenter99 described it? Or since you've edited your post have you found a better description and I should just wait and see?

same!

He and I were typing at the same time so I didn't see his explanation till after I posted the question but it makes sense. When I read it after posting the question I figured yeah that makes sense for angles and arcs on drawings but that won't work for distance on the Earth. But then when I read your link I realized "hey the Earth is just one big arc" lol.

each degree is divided into 60 minutes and subdivided into seconds, ect.
Each degree is roughly 69 miles apart.
So traveling 69 MPH for an hour would bring you to the next degree.

This is applying the latitude and longitude as a time measurement but it would be unpractical to find a position this way

Yes, you can. But it is going to confuse a lot of people, so I suggest you avoid doing that.

And for latitude, it doesn't apply unless you're at the equator.