or
OPEN
Monday through Friday
from 10 AM to 6 PM
?

or... ?

Are these at least correct ?

Well, normally you would write it like this:

Open Monday to Friday 10.00 - 6.00

Although there I'm not sure what's correct. Some people use colons instead of periods ("10:00"), some would write 10am - 6pm, etc.

Disclaimer: designer not copywriter, and from Sweden.

As usual in English there are several ways of putting this, but using your copy as a start

Open (could be all uppercase)
Mon. to Fri.
10am to 6pm (24 hour clock means you can drop the am and pm so 10:00 to 18:00, although the 24 hour clock causes some problems, especially to people without a background in the military or organisations which use radio communications)

Using an en-dash (for UK, em-dash for US)
Open (from is not really necessary)
Monday–Friday (or Mon–Fri) (or Mon.–Fri. although the full stop does make a space before the en-dash which you might want to compensate for with a thin space after the dash)
10:00–18:00 (or 10.00–18.00) (or 10am–6pm)

Slightly edited copy and my preference
Opening Hours
Monday–Friday
10am–6pm

Tim

Edit: despite Typophile’s preferences for old style (non-aligning) numerals in this case aligning numerals would be easier to read

Monday through Friday would be an American form I believe, not in regular use in UK.
Tim

The conventions in England and the US are sometimes different, so you will need to decide which to follow.

In the US the Chicago Manual of Style is the most widely used style book. It recommends either 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (note the space after the numeral and the periods in the abbreviation) or 10 AM to 6 PM with AM and PM in small caps, no periods.

The 24 hour notation is used even less in the US than in England, though it is used.

edit: also in the US it is 10:00 a.m. not 10.00 a.m. If you have to set English often the best thing is just to buy a style book for either England or the US, depending. These questions are endless, even for a native speaker.

Wow...
Ok, thanks a lot.
Just one question : do people really use the 24 hours clock in the "anglo-saxon" world ?

Mostly military but very rarely other folks. The 24 hour clock would get strange looks from most people here.

ChrisL

Then, I guess it would be "Working hours" instead of "Opening hours" (since this is not for a shop but for a creative studio). Am I correct ?

Just a little note about the 24 hours clock: it is really REALLY common to use it in France.
And when you actually learn to "read" the time on a clock at school in France, they teach you both ways (12 and 24 hours clock).

Anyway, the target of this creative studio is like... worldwide... So?

They do but depending on the audience for this notice you are probably safer to go without. As I hinted above it is generally used by organisations that use radio for communications where reduced clarity could result in misunderstandings, I have known people having trouble understanding 24 hour clocks and have to work out the time by subtracting 12 for any time after noon.

William, should there be a period after the m in ‘10 a.m to’?
Tim

While "Working hours" would be more correct, it is not really used for this kind of notice, it might be better to use just "Open". Also if this a worldwide notice you will need to add GMT (or whatever is applicable) after the time to give a timezone reference which would read 10am–6pm GMT.
Tim

Tim, on a.m. yes, my typo; corrected.

Ok, thank you very much !
Now, this is crazy: I can't find out how to type an en (or em) dash out of my iMac keyboard? How do you do that?…
PS: What about "Creative Hours" or "Creatively Open from"?

Is it the dash that comes out after pressing alt + shift + - ?

And my iMac keyboard is an AZERTY (not QWERTY) version, of course…

>Is it the dash that comes out after pressing alt + shift + - ?
That should be an em-dash —
en-dash is alt+-

The order in size will be - (hyphen) – (en dash) — (em-dash), hopefully it is the same for AZERTY

Creative Hours or Creatively Open from might imply that any work done outside those hours is not creative.
Tim

Right... I knew something felt wrong about it...

Ok (and as a note for the future generations) on an AZERTY keyobard :

- hyphen (-)
– en dash (shift + alt + -)
— em dash (alt + -)

How weird is that? I know…

So, if we sum it up that would be:

Open
Monday–Friday (or Mon.–Fri.)
10:00–6:00 GMT [or 10 a.m.–6 p.m. GMT or 10 AM–6 PM GMT (using small caps)]

Right?

>10:00–6:00 GMT

I would use 18:00 in this form.
Tim
I am not sure how the dashes should be using the US form of the a.m., p.m., I suspect they should be em-dashes

Further thought, instead of Open you could use Business Hours which will be more professional.
Tim

> I suspect they should be em-dashes

En-dash to join times--no space before or after--according to Chicago Manual of Style.

That Berkson guy has style :-)

ChrisL

En dashes for both Monday–Friday and for 10 AM–6 PM.

Forget the 24 hour clock.

I suggest using small caps, no periods, for AM and PM - forget what the style books say, that looks best. Full caps overwhelm the numerals (especially if they are osf).

Thanks a lot all of you !

In New York anyway, I think many businesses just post their hours as simply:
"M–F, 9–6"
("Open" up front is optional)

Is this kind of shorthand even more common than I think?

--Michael.

------------------------------------------------------
// love what you do or do something else. //
Michael Ebert -- graphic designer, jazz saxophonist, horror movie devotee
------------------------------------------------------

In the UK we're currently on British Summer Time, which is one hour off GMT, so GMT would be misleading.

Sould I say something like "local time" instead because in France we're also in "summer time"...

Everybody's in summer (or as we call it daylight savings) time except Arizona.

Really ? I thought only a few countries (such as England and France) where using this process of adding or - one hour… I'm surprised.
So, "local time" is good, right ?

Local time is only good if the reader knows what the local time is, GMT is a constant that is recognised in many countries based as it is on the 0º meridian, somebody in Britain (assuming they were aware of BST) would/should know to subtract 1 hour to work out the hours. An alternative might be to represent the hours for various continents/cities depending on how many countries they do business with.
Tim

Ok so that wooud be GMT+2 or CEST (Central Europe Summer Time) I guess…

Business Hours
Monday—Friday
10 AM—6 PM (CEST)

And now I'm running into the problem that I can't make small caps in Macromedia Flash...
So I guess it's going to be :

10:00—6:00 (CEST)

I would go with GMT +1, CET or UTC +1 and adjust the times when the clocks go back, that way viewers will not have to know when summer officially begins and ends. If your design uses aligning numerals you will not need small caps uppercase should work okay.

So...
Business Hours
Monday–Friday
9 AM–5 PM (CET)

or
Business Hours
Monday–Friday
8 AM–4 PM (UTC)

and change them when summer time ends (nb en-dashes)
Tim

gr8