-Absolute times may be specified in a wide variety of formats; this
-function tries to accept all the commonly used date formats. The most
-convenient formats are strings. Valid such formats include these two,
-
-@example
-@var{year}-@var{month}-@var{day} @var{hour}:@var{min}:@var{sec} @var{timezone}
-
-@var{hour}:@var{min}:@var{sec} @var{timezone} @var{month}/@var{day}/@var{year}
-@end example
-
-@noindent
-where in both examples all fields are numbers; the format that
-@code{current-time-string} returns is also allowed, and many others
-as well.
+Absolute times may be specified using a string with a limited variety
+of formats, and are taken to be times @emph{today}, even if already in
+the past. The recognized forms are @samp{@var{xxxx}},
+@samp{@var{x}:@var{xx}}, or @samp{@var{xx}:@var{xx}} (military time),
+and @samp{@var{xx}am}, @samp{@var{xx}AM}, @samp{@var{xx}pm},
+@samp{@var{xx}PM}, @samp{@var{xx}:@var{xx}am},
+@samp{@var{xx}:@var{xx}AM}, @samp{@var{xx}:@var{xx}pm}, or
+@samp{@var{xx}:@var{xx}PM}. A period can be used instead of a colon
+to separate the hour and minute parts.