| Chapter 9: Time |

| 9.8. Approximate times, lengths of time

Clocks and watches vary considerably in how much detail they show, and we tend not to report the time over-precisely: half-past ten is an elastic concept. The following room description for the Clock Chamber comes across much more naturally:

> The Clock Chamber is a room. "The dark chamber behind the clock face, a mill-room of gears which grind down the seconds. Through the glass you can see the reversed hands reading [the time of day to the nearest five minutes in words]."

The phrase "... to the nearest ..." rounds off the given time, just as it sounds. For instance, "9:58 PM to the nearest ten minutes" is 10:00 PM. As this shows, we can also quote lengths of time, not just times of day: for instance "7 hours", "one hour 14 minutes", or "90 minutes" all validly describe durations. We never (ordinarily) deal in periods of time longer than a single day.

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