Telling the Time

Here are some phrases you can use when you want to know the time:

To tell someone what the time is, we can say "The time is..." or, more usually, "It's...". Here is a typical dialogue:

Question:	What's the time, please?
Answer:	It's three o'clock.

The chart below shows you two different ways to tell someone what the time is.

	more formal	less formal
	It's...	It's...
3.00	three o'clock	three
3.02	just gone three o'clock	three oh two
3.03	three minutes past three	three oh three
3.05	five past three	three oh five
3.09	nine minutes past three	three oh nine
3.10	ten past three	three ten
3.15	a quarter past three	three fifteen
3.20	twenty past three	three twenty
3.21	twenty-one minutes past three	three twenty-one
3.25	twenty-five past three	three twenty-five
3.30	half past three	three thirty
3.35	twenty-five to four	three thirty-five
3.40	twenty to four	three forty
3.45	a quarter to four	three forty-five
3.50	ten to four	three fifty
3.55	five to four	three fifty-five
3.57	three minutes to four	three fifty-seven
3.58	nearly four c'clock	three fifty-eight
4.00	four o'clock	four

Time

We measure time mainly with seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years: