How to Write Times in Messages So Everyone Understands

When someone reads “let’s meet at 3pm,” they fill in their own time zone. Sometimes that’s fine. Across a distributed team, it’s how you get people on calls an hour apart from each other.

A few small habits fix this.

Always include the time zone. Even just adding the abbreviation helps. Better still, include UTC as a second reference — everyone can convert from UTC, and it never shifts with daylight saving:

• “Call at 2pm EST (19:00 UTC) on Friday”

Watch out for overloaded abbreviations. CST alone refers to Central Standard Time (UTC−6) and China Standard Time (UTC+8) — a 14-hour difference. IST could be India, Ireland, or Israel. When precision matters, write the offset explicitly or skip the abbreviation and just use UTC.

Include the date, not just the day. “Friday at 11pm UTC” is Saturday morning in Tokyo. Writing “Friday 13 June, 11pm UTC (Saturday 14 June, 8am JST)” removes that ambiguity entirely.

Prefer 24-hour time for global audiences. “12pm” and “12am” trip people up constantly. 14:00 doesn’t.

If you’re coordinating across more than two or three zones, stop listing every conversion in the email body. Use meetwhen to build a shareable link — your recipient sees the time in their own zone when they open it.