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B.C. to adopt new time zone code 'PCT' (cheknews.ca)
submitted 5 days ago by to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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[–] 10 points 5 days ago* (4 children)

As the province nears its first time not changing the clocks back in November, B.C. has now adopted a new time zone code “PCT.”

PCT is the abbreviation for Pacific Time, and can now be used instead of PST or PDT.

I could be wrong here, but I always understood "Pacific Time" to already be the name of the timezone that observes DST. Same with "Mountain Time," "Central Time," and "Eastern Time" being the names of the timezones regardless of whether they were on DST or not.

I see this leading to confusion.

Edited to add, I do understand that "PCT" is new, so that shouldn't be confusing. But if you say to someone "Pacific Time," I think it will not be clear.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago (1 child)

    Originally it's PST for Pacific Standard Time and PDT for Pacific Daylight savings Time.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago

    Yes, I understand. I think I maybe didn't express myself well. To me, and I think to anyone I've ever spoken, "Pacific Time" refers to PST/PDT depending on what time of year it is. Meaning to say, if you just say "Pacific Time", then it's a conditional time. I believe if you even search popular timezone websites, that is how they'll treat it. Example below.

    image

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  • [–] 4 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    Yeah; PCT is useful for digital systems to identify a zone that doesn’t shift time. Although personally I would have done something like put an X at the end of each zone that doesn’t shift.

    Makes me wonder what other languages do for the abbreviations though.

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  • [–] 8 points 5 days ago

    I don't see anything that explicitly defined why they chose PCT, but I think it seems reasonable. PST means Pacific Standard Time, and PDT means Pacific Daylight Time. I could see PCT making Pacific Constant Time, or maybe Pacific Coordinated Time (in reference to UTC). Changing the middle character seems consistent with convention for timezone abbreviations.

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