How to write lengths of time in a short way with numbers

I am writing statistics results and I want to put a list of lengths of time.

In decimal values it will be, for example, 1.90 hours but this is not very human friendly.

Then I think I can use 1 hour and 54 minutes but it is very long and difficult to compare with other lengths of time.

I would like to have something like: 1:54 but I don't know how to express the units. Would it be 1:54 hours or would it be 1:54 minutes? both feel wrong.

The W3 standard uses:

hh:mm:ss

For simple timestamp, with no seconds, try:

1h54m

or:

01h54m

Both are readily parsed by a computer due to the h and m and indicating the end of the numeric.

ISO8601 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601) has a section on periods, so things like "P1D" represents one day, or "P3Y6M4DT12H30M5S" represents a duration of "three years, six months, four days, twelve hours, thirty minutes, and five seconds".

You have to be VERY careful when using time. For example,

1:54 could mean

• 01:54 AM - A time
• 13:54 PM - A time
• 1 hour 54 mins. - A duration
• 1 min. 54 seconds - A duration
• 1 out of 54 - a ratio
• probably many others

So your best bet is to know your target audience. For example office workers that always work 9am to 5pm will see 1:54 is 1 hour 54 mins. after 12 - noon. While an audio editing team of people may see it as 1 min, 54 seconds.

So, that leaves us with a few options if your trying to get everyone to understand.

1.90 hours is a good start. 1h54m is decent 01:54:00 is good too 01:54.00 is good I would choose, personally

114 mins.

or

two columns

Hours | Mins  
1     | 54

Both are easy on the computer and hard to misunderstand.