As unlikely as it sounds, I think the world needs more acronyms for talking about time. The existing system of three letter acronyms is great when used properly but it so rarely is.

• I regularly get people talking to me about GMT when they mean BST (because it’s summer time), I tend to just assume that’s what they’ve done, because you look like a pedant correcting them but I do worry that one day they will actually mean GMT because they’ve used some conversion tool or work on the space programme or something and have not taken in to account summer time.
• Then there is the issue of not knowing the acronym or not being sure the person you’re talking to does. It’s no good me sending a message talking about PST to someone if they going to assume I’m trying to tell them a secret and not talking about Pacific Standard Time. “psssst, let’s have a meeting”
• Not to mention the down-right confusing stuff like is BST used as Beijing Standard Time instead of British Summer Time, which I have seen (should be CST for Chinese Standard Time in English, Beijing Time in Chinese, hence the confusion).

My proposed solution is simple…

• yt = your time, as in I’m a nice guy and I’ve converted it to your time zone (or I think you are a moron who can’t count)
• mt = my time, as I don’t know where you are or as in I’m too lazy, drunk or mathematically challenged to convert it for you

Examples…

Who’s with me?