[tedmiston]

> Life is too short to remember what each timezone name means and converting to it, UTC offsets are much easier on the mental calculator.

Many people also get the timezone names completely wrong. I've had multiple scheduling email exchanges where someone says X pm EST not realizing that at the time it's currently EDT and that EST ≠ EDT.

And yet, for some reason, the two-letter abbreviations (e.g., ET) that are technically correct year-round, never seem to have caught on in the wild.

I've given up on the abbreviations and just say "Eastern" now to avoid confusion.

[kroltan]

Fair enough, but please only use that with strictly USA audiences. (And remember that public information likely will not be targeted to strictly USA audiences)

Names don't carry any information intrinsically, they are only a reference to the actual information, and the offset information is pretty short, so why not just provide the information directly?

"X pm GMT-3" only requires the reader to know their own timezone offset, unlike "X pm Brasilia time" (which is inaccurately known as São Paulo time outside Brazil) or "X pm BRT", which requires the reader to both know what that timezone means, and their own (or, more likely, requires them to look the conversion up).

(And if the difference between GMT and UTC is significant, I hope it didn't take my comment to convince you about using offsets :> )