Editing Day (section)

== Boundaries ==
[[File:Sun and Moon Nuremberg chronicle.jpg|thumb|208px|[[Sun]] and [[Moon]], [[Hartmann Schedel]]'s ''[[Nuremberg Chronicle]]'', 1493]]{{More citations needed section|date=May 2023}}
For most [[Diurnality|diurnal]] animals, the day naturally begins at dawn and ends at sunset. Humans, with their cultural norms and scientific knowledge, have employed several different conceptions of the day's boundaries.

<!-- === Evening to evening === -->
In the [[Hebrew Bible]], [[Book of Genesis|Genesis]] 1:5 defines a day in terms of "evening" and "morning" before recounting the creation of the Sun to illuminate it: "And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day."
The [[Judaism|Jewish]] day begins at either sunset or nightfall (when three second-[[Magnitude (astronomy)|magnitude]] stars appear).
[[Middle Ages|Medieval]] Europe also followed this tradition, known as [[Florentine calendar|Florentine]] reckoning: In this system, a reference like "two hours into the day" meant ''two hours after sunset'' and thus times during the evening need to be shifted back one calendar day in modern reckoning.
Days such as [[Christmas Eve]], [[Halloween]] (“All Hallows’ Eve”), and the Eve of [[Agnes of Rome|Saint Agnes]] are remnants of the older pattern when [[Holiday#Religious holidays|holidays]] began during the prior evening.

<!-- === Midnight to midnight === -->
The common convention among the [[Ancient Rome|ancient Romans]],<ref>See [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2008.01.0212%3Asection%3D84 Plutarch, ''Quaestiones Romanae'', 84.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210209025420/http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:2008.01.0212:section%3D84 |date=2021-02-09 }}</ref> [[Ancient China|ancient Chinese]]<ref>[[s:zh:清史稿/卷48]]: 起''子正''，盡''夜子初''。</ref> and in modern times is for the civil day to begin at midnight, i.e. 00:00, and to last a full 24 hours until 24:00, i.e. 00:00 of the next day. The [[International Meridian Conference]] of 1884 resolved
<blockquote>That the Conference expresses the hope that as soon as may be practicable the astronomical and nautical days will be arranged everywhere to begin at midnight.</blockquote>

<!-- === Morning to morning === -->
In [[ancient Egypt]] the day was reckoned from sunrise to sunrise.

Prior to 1926, Turkey had two time systems: ''Turkish'', counting the hours from sunset, and ''French'', counting the hours from midnight.