I hear phrases like "half-past", "quarter til", and "quarter after" way less often since digital clocks have became more commonplace. - eviltoast
  • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    8 months ago

    I think it’s a rounding thing. Looking at an analog clock, you’ll see at a glance that the hand is about halfway around the circle but it takes an additional processing step to determine whether it’s 6:31 or 6:29. Looking at a digital clock, you’ll see that it’s 6:29 first and then it takes another step of processing to determine that 29 minutes is roughly halfway through the hour.