13 hour cast
A 13 hour cast writes thirteen hours as a label in front of the word cast. Most people who type it want the actors in the film 13 Hours. The number is a duration, not a clock time.
How it works
English uses a hyphen when a number and a unit jointly modify a noun. Thirteen hours of running time, fishing time, or story time become a 13-hour cast, a 13-hour trip, a 13-hour siege. Without the hyphen, 13 hour cast looks like a broken phrase. With it, the duration and the noun lock together. That is the format. It is the same rule as 5-hour, 24-hour, and 36-hour.
Cast, in the search that actually arrives, usually means the acting company: who is in the picture. 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi is a 2016 film directed by Michael Bay, drawn from the September 2012 attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya. The title takes a thirteen-hour stretch from that night and uses it as a name. John Krasinski is a lead. A credits page lists the rest. This page is not that list. The title format and the word “cast” are what collide in the query.
Thirteen hours is also a real work or trip length. A charter that advertises a 13-hour day is selling elapsed time on the water, not a movie. A production that budgets a 13-hour shooting day is talking about crew hours. Same spelling, different noun. Read the word after the number before you look up actors.
Decide whether “cast” means actors or a duration stuck to another noun. If it is the film, the title is 13 Hours; the year of release is 2016. If it is a trip or a shift, 13 hours is elapsed time: start plus thirteen hours. Write 13-hour before a noun and 13 hours when the hours are the object you are counting.
Duration, not 1:00 p.m.
13:00 on a 24-hour clock is 1:00 p.m. That is a time of day. A 13-hour span is a length. Confusing the two is the usual format error. If a boat leaves at 5:00 a.m. for a 13-hour cast in the fishing sense, it is due back around 6:00 p.m., not at 13:00. If a listing says “13:00 cast,” it may mean a 1 p.m. call time for actors. The colon and the hyphen are doing different jobs. The colon marks a clock. The hyphen marks a compound duration.
On a 12-hour clock, thirteen hours past 8 a.m. is 9 p.m. Thirteen hours past 8 p.m. is 9 a.m. the next morning. Crossing midnight does not change the length. It only changes the date line under the end time. Write both ends if anyone else has to meet you. “A 13-hour day” without start and end is a length with no handle.
The film’s own running time is about two hours and twenty-four minutes. That is how long the movie lasts on a screen. It is not the thirteen hours in the title. Title duration and runtime are two formats that share a number word and nothing else. Do not file the movie under “13-hour video” because the poster says 13 Hours.
A colon makes 13:00 a clock. A hyphen makes 13-hour a length. Mixing them is how a 1 p.m. call becomes a thirteen-hour day on paper.
Questions and answers
- What is a 13 hour cast in a search box?
- Usually the actors in 13 Hours (2016). Sometimes a thirteen-hour fishing or work day. The hyphen does not tell you which noun you meant.
- Is 13:00 the same as 13 hours?
- No. 13:00 is 1 p.m. Thirteen hours is a span you add to a start time.
- Do I hyphenate 13 hour?
- Hyphenate when it sits in front of a noun: 13-hour cast. Leave it open when you count: 13 hours long.
Related guides
100 seconds
100 seconds equals one minute forty seconds, or 100 s, or PT1M40S. It is a short duration. It is not 1:00, and it is not a hundred on a digital clock.
120 minutes in hour
120 minutes is 2 hours, because one hour holds 60 minutes. Write it as 2:00 or as two hours; it is not 120 hours.
14 hour ago
Fourteen hours ago is the instant 14 hours before now. An hour ago calculator subtracts that span from the current clock, in the same time zone, and shows the earlier timestamp.