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LITIGATION SUPPORT TIP OF THE NIGHT

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UTC Time is GMT Time, but what is UTC?

Sean O'Shea
Apr 21, 2021
1 min read

It's very common to find references to UTC time in metadata.

The time is the same as Greenwich Mean Time, the time zone along 0° longitude, and is used to standardize the time collected from email custodians working in various time zones. UTC is also referred to as coordinated universal time. But what does UTC stand for?

You might guess 'universal time code' or that it's the acronym for coordinated universal time in a different language. In fact, the UTC acronym is the result of an anglophone / francophone clash. Organizations in English speaking countries came up with a term coordinated universal time and wanted to use the acronym 'CUT'. The French used the term temps universel coordonné, with the abbreviation TUC. UTC was chosen as a simple compromise that would make sense in neither language but be acceptable to both.