Does this make any sense?

[jaF0]

There is no context because I haven't gotten that far yet.

Like I mentioned initially, think Gremlins or maybe Ghostbusters. Or the Nightmare Before Christmas. The line may go into a story loosely ripping off Batteries Not Included where the little guys come to life at night when no one is around .... or so it appears.

I'm just trying to test to see if the line, or something similar sets the mood I'm looking for.

 

[KeithD]

There is no context because I haven't gotten that far yet.

Like I mentioned initially, think Gremlins or maybe Ghostbusters. Or the Nightmare Before Christmas. The line may go into a story loosely ripping off Batteries Not Included where the little guys come to life at night when no one is around .... or so it appears.

I'm just trying to test to see if the line, or something similar sets the mood I'm looking for.

Well, yes, it's a line if it fits in the context it appears in. If you're just throwing it out as a single line, no it doesn't fit anything and you're just wasting our time.

 

[Trionyx]

If one sleeps from 10 pm to 6 am, the 'middle' of the night for them is around 2 am.
So to answer the question, it would be somewhere between MN and 2 am.

 

[jaF0]

Sometime between midnight and the middle of the night in the dark of the house, not a creature was stirring .... almost. A faint glow began to cast shadows across the room gradually becoming more intense. The orb that had been placed on the mantle also began to emit a soft hum as the glow increased and it lifted itself gently into the air, beginning to explore the house.



Or something like that.

 

[AlexBailey]

I tells me you're losing your link with the natural world. Midnight is the middle of the night, just a noon is the middle of the day.


I found myself explaining to some teenagers the other day that there is just as much day light between 6:am and noon as there is between noon and 6: pm. One of them said, "No way!"

I'm a night owl for sure, mostly because my wife is. I try to remind myself that seeping into 9:am wastes as much daylight as going to bed by 3: pm, but I usually don't listen and hit the snooze button.

Before electric lights the average person would probably go to bed earlier and get up earlier, and event planning paid close attention to the phase of the moon. I wonder if it's possible to track historical macro scale sleep patterns.

 

[NotWise]

Oops.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Before electric lights the average person would probably go to bed earlier and get up earlier, and event planning paid close attention to the phase of the moon. I wonder if it's possible to track historical macro scale sleep patterns.

I read a history of sleep years ago that investigated that. The author read diaries written by all sorts of people over the centuries, and a very common occurrence was a creative state in the middle of the night, after the first three or four hours sleep. The diary writers, especially writer writers but other folk too, would wake, light candles, and write for several hours, then go back to bed for several more hours, finally waking with dawn.

It was commonly defined as a kind of fugue state, not fully conscious like in day-time, still lucid but not dreaming either. Seems the rested mind actually thought and processed differently.

My mum, as she got older, said the same thing - how she got by with far less sleep, and would wake in the night for an hour or two. Once she got used to it, she wouldn't fight it, and ending up reading twice as much. I'm starting to find it too, but that might just be the bladder...

 

[MelissaBaby]

I was going to make a comment about Frank Sinatra singing In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning, but I mentioned John Coltrane in another thread and it started a shitshow.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I read a history of sleep years ago that investigated that. The author read diaries written by all sorts of people over the centuries, and a very common occurrence was a creative state in the middle of the night, after the first three or four hours sleep. The diary writers, especially writer writers but other folk too, would wake, light candles, and write for several hours, then go back to bed for several more hours, finally waking with dawn.

It was commonly defined as a kind of fugue state, not fully conscious like in day-time, still lucid but not dreaming either. Seems the rested mind actually thought and processed differently.

My mum, as she got older, said the same thing - how she got by with far less sleep, and would wake in the night for an hour or two. Once she got used to it, she wouldn't fight it, and ending up reading twice as much. I'm starting to find it too, but that might just be the bladder...

That's probably when most babies were conceived as well.

 

[ElectricBlue]

That's probably when most babies were conceived as well.

If you've read the first one hundred pages of Tristram Shandy, definitely so.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Midnight is the start of the Third Night Watch; the Fourth starts at 3 am and ends at 6. The middle hours of these two watches comprise "the witching hours." Without the context, however, I can't be sure this is what the writer was alluding to.

 

[XerXesXu]

I tells me you're losing your link with the natural world. Midnight is the middle of the night, just a noon is the middle of the day.

Yes, if solar noon is mid-day by local clock time. There can be an asychrony of up to two hours. Think summer-time and double-summer-time (daylight saving time).

Mid-night is determined by mid-day local time, the middle of the night by solar noon in local time.

 

[KeithD]

Neither "mid-day" nor "mid-night" (hyphenated) are actually words. If they were, that would be helpful in separating the two definitions of "midnight."

 

[XerXesXu]

Neither "mid-day" nor "mid-night" (hyphenated) are actually words. If they were, that would be helpful in separating the two definitions of "midnight."

They are words. We simply differ, I expect about many things. If you promise not to be tedious I shan't either.

 

[KeithD]

They are words. We simply differ, I expect about many things. If you promise not to be tedious I shan't either.

You aren't a writing authority, and those aren't acceptable words. In fact, your various posts on grammar and spelling indicate you are just off the wall and to be ignored on those subjects. Other posters take heed.

 

[XerXesXu]

You aren't a writing authority. In fact, your various posts on grammar and spelling indicate you are just off the wall and to be ignored on those subjects. Other posters take heed.

There are two types of people in this world.

The first believe in God, and that God created the world and all the words in it, that he inscribed them on tablets of stone and sent them to Chicago University Press and told it to print these words and all the other typographical markings he included, and that no other should be permitted. And he said to Chicago University Press, "I am a jealous God, these are my words and you shall prefer no other, nor shall you prefer any other authority ahead of me. I am a vindictive God and I shall punish any who disobey me." And KeithD bought his bible and went forth to do God's work.

Then there are the other sort of people, those who believe that as they created God, it's no great task to create words and others marks and use them creatively, and they go into the world and do as they please.

Posters be warned. There's someone out there selling pups.

 

[KeithD]

Not going to argue with you. Your posts suffice.

 

[XerXesXu]

Not going to argue with you. Your posts suffice.

Thank God (not the one at CUP) for that.

I'm a nice, decent, moral and upright person (see what I did there) and I'm ashamed to admit that I actually enjoy taking the piss out of you.

 

[KeithD]

Thank God (not the one at CUP) for that.

I'm a nice, decent, moral and upright person (see what I did there) and I'm ashamed to admit that I actually enjoy taking the piss out of you.

I'm amused that you think that's what you do.

 

[ElectricBlue]

As I see it, a day is divided in night (0 - 6), morning (6 - 12), Midday (12- 18), and evening (18 - 0). As such, the middle of the night is (0 + 6)/2 = 3.00.

Midnight = 0.00 and noon is 12.00.

In such a context, 'Sometime between Midnight and the middle of the night ... ' is sometime between 0.00 and 3.00

Engineer? Mathematician? Poet?

 

[LilyWaters]

I read a history of sleep years ago that investigated that. The author read diaries written by all sorts of people over the centuries, and a very common occurrence was a creative state in the middle of the night, after the first three or four hours sleep. The diary writers, especially writer writers but other folk too, would wake, light candles, and write for several hours, then go back to bed for several more hours, finally waking with dawn.

It was commonly defined as a kind of fugue state, not fully conscious like in day-time, still lucid but not dreaming either. Seems the rested mind actually thought and processed differently.

My mum, as she got older, said the same thing - how she got by with far less sleep, and would wake in the night for an hour or two. Once she got used to it, she wouldn't fight it, and ending up reading twice as much. I'm starting to find it too, but that might just be the bladder...

OMG, I am 100% here for the romance of this - writing and writing while the world sleeps. Maybe I'll try it one day...

 

[AlexBailey]

... a very common occurrence was a creative state in the middle of the night, after the first three or four hours sleep. The diary writers, especially writer writers but other folk too, would wake, light candles, and write for several hours, then go back to bed for several more hours, finally waking with dawn.

It was commonly defined as a kind of fugue state, not fully conscious like in day-time, still lucid but not dreaming either. Seems the rested mind actually thought and processed differently.

"Burning the midnight oil?"



From the web:

It was first written in the book ‘Emblemes’, by author Frances Quarles in 1635.

“Wee spend our mid-day sweat, or mid-night oyle;

Wee tyre the night in thought; the day in toyle.”

 

[SimonDoom]

As I see it, a day is divided in night (0 - 6), morning (6 - 12), Midday (12- 18), and evening (18 - 0). As such, the middle of the night is (0 + 6)/2 = 3.00.

Midnight = 0.00 and noon is 12.00.

In such a context, 'Sometime between Midnight and the middle of the night ... ' is sometime between 0.00 and 3.00

This seems perfectly rational to me as one way of looking at the words, but to me the necessity of an analysis like this reinforces Lovecraft's judgment that it's a "speedbump" (a perfect word in this case).

As NotWise said, it's imprecise. It COULD mean something like this, but it doesn't convey the meaning sharply and precisely.

"Mid" and "middle" are generally understood to mean the same thing. Here, they are being used to convey something different, and if you have to pause to think about why, then I think the phrase is questionable.

In general I think it's great for authors to do their own thing, but sometimes deference to group-think is sensible. If I were in jaFO's shoes and a substantial fraction of experienced writers told me a phrase like this didn't quite work, I'd ditch it and find another. There is no objective test of comprehensibility. If enough people find a combination of words incomprehensible, then it's incomprehensible, no matter what I personally think. If a phrase is especially felicitous, I may sacrifice some degree of comprehensibility for felicity. But I will only go so far, and it better be pretty darn felicitous if I'm taking a big risk that readers will go, "Huh?"

 

[GinnyPPC]

It might not be exactly what the OP was going for but I've been a fan of the phrase oh dark hundred. As in:

"What time did you have to get up to catch the plane?" they asked.

"Oh dark hundred" I replied.

 

[AlexBailey]

I'll buy Ruben's explanation, it makes sense once explained, but doesn't that version of 'midnight' correlate to afternoon or mid-day?

Does mid-day equal noon, or is it more of a vague time within the afternoon?


(What exactly is a bungalow?)