Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1993 08:58:25 EST From: Larry Horn Subject: Re: Half Past the Hour The above was perfectly colloquial, and indeed represented the normal way to denote e.g. 3:30, for me as a young native New Yorker and still does. I had no idea that it's outside anyone's dialect area (within English, that is!). Introspecting, though, I probably do tend to avoid using it with children (my own or others), and I would predict that it might tend to disappear as digital timepieces become more and more standard. Larry