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Rules for Using Numbers in Stories
by Puddin’
One sees all sorts of advice on using numbers on the Web. Here’s one example out of many:
Daily Writing Tips — the basic point of which is “spell out numbers under ten,” with plenty of special rules to modify the basic advice, as well as common variants of the usual rule.
I disagree, and so do many others. It’s partly a matter of taste, but also of courtesy and consideration, so I personally choose to follow the most stringent rules, which restrict the use of arabic numerals to fairly large numbers like 10,974,126 or numbers involving decimal fractions like pi is approximately 3.141592638…, plus lots of following digits. Common fractions, on the other hand, should almost always be spelled out:
One half gallon
Seven sixteenths of an inch
If I had a third of an apple….
The same advise goes double for symbols, however cleverly they’re automatically inserted by one’s word processor or painstakingly inserted by hand:
½ only looks like something, and is completely invisible to most screen readers, so it’s moderately contemptuous of people who have trouble seeing, depending on exactly what one might be thinking when one uses it. What does it mean? “One half?” “One over two?” “Point five?” How are you supposed to read it? The reason we’re fluent in reading is that our brains instantly flood our thoughts with the sound of every word we read. We may not even be aware of this, but they can see it happening on brain scans these days, the wave of neural activity spreading out from the visual cortex to the auditory cortex, sometimes even to the areas of the brain which control the movements of our tongues, lips, and vocal chords. We’re few of us that fluent with arbitrary symbols, so they put a stumbling block before your readers that they may or may not trip over.
¾ is the same. You may have saved a few keystrokes for yourself, but what are they worth if they annoy your readers?
Two ¢ is not as transparent as two cents, much less 2¢. What are you supposed to think if you can see the symbol at all? Two cents, two cent, two pennies? Why not “a couple of cents,” or “a pair of pennies?” Symbols can stand for many things, not just the one one happens to be thinking of. How much of an author’s story is the reader expected to finish on their own? If the reader isn’t familiar with US conventions, they may not recognise the symbol at all, which kind of spoils the effect, as well as the flow of the story while the reader wanders off to find a reference book and puzzles out what the hell the author was trying to say. Can all of us, for example, instantly identify which monetary denominations the following symbols indicate? ₮, ₯, ₴, ₪, ₤, ₡, ₨, ₩? How about the countries which use them? Does the sound of the symbol spring instantly into your mind? How would you read it aloud?
The symbols stand for Tugrik, Drachma, Hryvnia, New Sheqel, Lira, Colón, Rupee, and Won, by the way, but the fact is that the vast majority of people who speak English will have no clue.
The currencies they indicate are used in Mongolia, Greece, Ukraine, Israel, Italy, Costa Rica or El Salvador, India and many other countries in that part of the world, and North or South Korea, respectively.
If one is old enough, and lived in the UK well before 1968, one may remember prices that looked like this: £1 2/6, which stands for ‘one pound, two shillings and six-pence’, or ‘one pound, two and six’, or any number of slangy and dialectical variants. Should your reader know how to convert the symbols to words, or should you?
According to The Chicago Manual of StyleThe Chicago Manual of Style (2003, p. 380), in nontechnical written contexts, whole numbers from one to one hundred should always be spelled out, and other whole numbers should be written in terms of numerals. In addition, when a number begins a sentence, it is always spelled out unless it appears awkward, in which case the sentence should be recast, although this runs the risk of making the sentence itself awkward, unnatural, or weak.
The American Press Association has a similar rule, expressed differently: Write out numbers that require no more than two words.
Correct: A hundred and one trombones led the big parade.
Bad: 101 trombones led the big parade.
Worse: The parade was led by 101 trombones.
Correct: Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall...
Bad: 99 bottles of beer on the wall...
Worse: There were 99 bottles of beer on the wall...
Partly, these rules are a matter of courtesy because people speak numbers in different ways. Highway 101. Is it “Highway One Oh One,” “Highway One Hundred One,” “Highway One Hundred and One,” or is it “Highway a Hundred and One?” As an author, however, the way people speak makes a huge difference in characterisation, as well as the rhythm of the sentence, but you give the reader no clue without writing down the actual words. A character who says, “A hunnert ’n one dalmatians” is different — and sounds different — from a character who says, “One hundred and one dalmatians.”
Is the author supposed to leave character quirks to the reader, creating words the author never meant to say?
In the Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln said:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Would it be correct to write: “4 20’s and 7 years ago...”? How about “87 years ago...”? After all, they mean the same thing, don't they?
In some areas of the English-speaking world, “22” is pronounced “two and twenty.” In others, “twenty-two.” What does your character say?
Your character has the following smattering of letters and numbers attributed to her: “I’ll give you £10 for your hat!” but what does your character actually say?
1. I’ll give you a tenner for your hat!
2. I’ll give you ten quid for your hat!
3. I’ll give you ten pounds for your hat!
4. I’ll give you pound sterling symbol one zero for your hat!
Arabic numerals and monetary symbols don’t actually sound like anything, but must needs rather be translated into local language or slang. As a writer, there are very few occasions on which it’s advisable to let your reader finish the story on your behalf or write your character’s dialogue.
If you have a sentence in German, and the character says, « Ich habe dreiundzwanzig Bücher. », does it make a difference if you type: « Ich habe 23 Bá¼cher. »? Do your readers hear it the same way? How do you know?
In some cases, how a number is pronounced depends not only on who’s counting, but on when and what’s being counted: Lakeland Dialect Society - Te deu wid sheep
There are also typographical reasons for this delicacy that may not be immediately apparent to those without an eye for fine detail. Due to the fact that a large proportion of technical types are fashion and design klutzes, when computer standards were defined, the only slots reserved for numbers were uppercase numbers, because they’re handy in the neat little columns of figures preferred by accountants and electronic calculator fans. Because we live in the computer age, many of us either don’t know, or don’t remember, that there are lowercase numbers as well, designed to be used in running text, and for that reason often called “text figures.”
Because the same general class of nerd are in charge of Unicode, they’re left out of the standard definitions of every world alphabet on the spurious grounds that they’re only a different way of writing the same characters. Of course, upper and lower case letters like “a” and “A” have exactly the same problem, but that’s different, somehow, which I’m quite sure makes perfect sense if one is a perfect dweeb: Numbers are better than words anyway, so why muck about with numbers which look well when lumbered with trivial excrescences like words. One shudders to think of it.
All this thick-headedness means that the only place you’re at all likely to see text figures is (if you live in the USA) on the date stamped on a US penny or happen to be carrying a facsimile copy of the Declaration of Independence in one’s pocketbook. In the UK, you’re out of luck unless you usually like to carry around a Bank of England Tercentenary 1994 two pound coin for sentimental reasons:
Note that the above coin is “double struck” and extremely valuable. If it’s not double struck, it’s worth a penny, despite the very pretty old style numerals in the date. If it is, it’s worth upwards of US$30,000 and still has lovely figures.
The rest of the British coin assemblage uses ugly numbers by default, very apt, one supposes, for a “nation of shopkeepers,” as Napolean once contemptuously called them (somewhat before Waterloo, one is forced to observe), since they were invented in the late Eighteenth Century for the convenience of producing advertising display text without custom pi fonts or engraved art.
A printed copy of the American Declaration of Independence
Here’s an example of how lowercase numbers should be used:
You are cordially invited to a cocktail party at 1279 18th Street, on the 7th of July, 2010, at 21:30 hours. Please R.S.V.P. to 1-800-123-4567, Extension 89.
Notice (if you’re lucky enough to have one of the handful of decent fonts available without paying the extra dosh for a “professional” font family) how the overall typographical “colour” (actually, greyish) of the page is maintained by text figures, which also maintain the usual profile of English sentences.
Contrast this with the same invitation using the ordinary (but extraordinarily ugly) run of the mill dreck one sees in machine fonts these days:
You are cordially invited to a cocktail party at 1279 18th Street, on the 7th of July, 2010, at 21:30 hours. Please R.S.V.P. to 1-800-123-4567, Extension 89.
Using uppercase numbers designed to complement advertising signage:
APPLES: 23¢/lb.
is quite similar to using all capital letters in sentences:
Now IS the TIME for ALL good….
and they irritate at least some eyes.
The fonts I used that contain default text figures are:
Georgia, 'Hoefler Text', 'Big Caslon', Constantia, 'Colona MT', 'Bradley Text', 'Bradley Text TT', 'Palatino Linotype', 'URW Bookman L', Cardo, and 'FF Scala' which last is a professional font which will set one back the best part of US$300 for the full set of common variants, regular, italic, italic bold, bold, and small caps.
If the preceding example didn’t make any sense because the numbers looked the same in both examples, many of the fonts listed above can be readily found on the Web or are included on your computer system distribution discs as a “extra” to be installed at your leisure.
Note that commas should not be used to separate words that are part of one number because this can make the number ambiguous or confusing.
Correct: One thousand one hundred one...
Correct: One thousand one hundred and one...
NOTE: An “and” between the hundreds and the digits from one to ninety-nine is optional and regional.
Bad: One thousand, one hundred, one...
Bad: One thousand, one hundred and one...
The following table summarizes the English names given to the first one hundred and fifty positive numbers. The optional “and” is omitted for brevity.
| 0 | = | zero |
| 1 | = | one |
| 2 | = | two |
| 3 | = | three |
| 4 | = | four |
| 5 | = | five |
| 6 | = | six |
| 7 | = | seven |
| 8 | = | eight |
| 9 | = | nine |
| 10 | = | ten |
| 11 | = | eleven |
| 12 | = | twelve |
| 13 | = | thirteen |
| 14 | = | fourteen |
| 15 | = | fifteen |
| 16 | = | sixteen |
| 17 | = | seventeen |
| 18 | = | eighteen |
| 19 | = | nineteen |
| 20 | = | twenty |
| 21 | = | twenty-one |
| 22 | = | twenty-two |
| 23 | = | twenty-three |
| 24 | = | twenty-four |
| 25 | = | twenty-five |
| 26 | = | twenty-six |
| 27 | = | twenty-seven |
| 28 | = | twenty-eight |
| 29 | = | twenty-nine |
| 30 | = | thirty |
| 31 | = | thirty-one |
| 32 | = | thirty-two |
| 33 | = | thirty-three |
| 34 | = | thirty-four |
| 35 | = | thirty-five |
| 36 | = | thirty-six |
| 37 | = | thirty-seven |
| 38 | = | thirty-eight |
| 39 | = | thirty-nine |
| 40 | = | forty |
| 41 | = | forty-one |
| 42 | = | forty-two |
| 43 | = | forty-three |
| 44 | = | forty-four |
| 45 | = | forty-five |
| 46 | = | forty-six |
| 47 | = | forty-seven |
| 48 | = | forty-eight |
| 49 | = | forty-nine |
| 50 | = | fifty |
| 51 | = | fifty-one |
| 52 | = | fifty-two |
| 53 | = | fifty-three |
| 54 | = | fifty-four |
| 55 | = | fifty-five |
| 56 | = | fifty-six |
| 57 | = | fifty-seven |
| 58 | = | fifty-eight |
| 59 | = | fifty-nine |
| 60 | = | sixty |
| 61 | = | sixty-one |
| 62 | = | sixty-two |
| 63 | = | sixty-three |
| 64 | = | sixty-four |
| 65 | = | sixty-five |
| 66 | = | sixty-six |
| 67 | = | sixty-seven |
| 68 | = | sixty-eight |
| 69 | = | sixty-nine |
| 70 | = | seventy |
| 71 | = | seventy-one |
| 72 | = | seventy-two |
| 73 | = | seventy-three |
| 74 | = | seventy-four |
| 75 | = | seventy-five |
| 76 | = | seventy-six |
| 77 | = | seventy-seven |
| 78 | = | seventy-eight |
| 79 | = | seventy-nine |
| 80 | = | eighty |
| 81 | = | eighty-one |
| 82 | = | eighty-two |
| 83 | = | eighty-three |
| 84 | = | eighty-four |
| 85 | = | eighty-five |
| 86 | = | eighty-six |
| 87 | = | eighty-seven |
| 88 | = | eighty-eight |
| 89 | = | eighty-nine |
| 90 | = | ninety |
| 91 | = | ninety-one |
| 92 | = | ninety-two |
| 93 | = | ninety-three |
| 94 | = | ninety-four |
| 95 | = | ninety-five |
| 96 | = | ninety-six |
| 97 | = | ninety-seven |
| 98 | = | ninety-eight |
| 99 | = | ninety-nine |
| 100 | = | one hundred |
| 101 | = | one hundred one |
| 102 | = | one hundred two |
| 103 | = | one hundred three |
| 104 | = | one hundred four |
| 105 | = | one hundred five |
| 106 | = | one hundred six |
| 107 | = | one hundred seven |
| 108 | = | one hundred eight |
| 109 | = | one hundred nine |
| 110 | = | one hundred ten |
| 111 | = | one hundred eleven |
| 112 | = | one hundred twelve |
| 113 | = | one hundred thirteen |
| 114 | = | one hundred fourteen |
| 115 | = | one hundred fifteen |
| 116 | = | one hundred sixteen |
| 117 | = | one hundred seventeen |
| 118 | = | one hundred eighteen |
| 119 | = | one hundred nineteen |
| 120 | = | one hundred twenty |
| 121 | = | one hundred twenty-one |
| 122 | = | one hundred twenty-two |
| 123 | = | one hundred twenty-three |
| 124 | = | one hundred twenty-four |
| 125 | = | one hundred twenty-five |
| 126 | = | one hundred twenty-six |
| 127 | = | one hundred twenty-seven |
| 128 | = | one hundred twenty-eight |
| 129 | = | one hundred twenty-nine |
| 130 | = | one hundred thirty |
| 131 | = | one hundred thirty-one |
| 132 | = | one hundred thirty-two |
| 133 | = | one hundred thirty-three |
| 134 | = | one hundred thirty-four |
| 135 | = | one hundred thirty-five |
| 136 | = | one hundred thirty-six |
| 137 | = | one hundred thirty-seven |
| 138 | = | one hundred thirty-eight |
| 139 | = | one hundred thirty-nine |
| 140 | = | one hundred forty |
| 141 | = | one hundred forty-one |
| 142 | = | one hundred forty-two |
| 143 | = | one hundred forty-three |
| 144 | = | one hundred forty-four |
| 145 | = | one hundred forty-five |
| 146 | = | one hundred forty-six |
| 147 | = | one hundred forty-seven |
| 148 | = | one hundred forty-eight |
| 149 | = | one hundred forty-nine |
| 150 | = | one hundred fifty |
Comments
Thank you for adding your two farthings worth
We have become very lazy, grammar-wise, and I confess I use Roman numerals too in emails and stuff. BUT I do it deliberately and not out of ignorance.
Muchos Gracias Professora Puddintane!
Con Gratitud
Kim
I might add...
that when writing out numbers, the word "and" has a special meaning.
one hundred one = 101
one hundred and one = 100.1
or some longer numbers:
one hundred forty-five and fifty-seven = 145.57
one hundred twenty-five thousand one hundred and forty-five = 125,100.45
This last should really be written out as: one hundred twenty-five thousand one hundred and forty-five hundredths.
The "and" represents the location of the decimal. (I used the US convention of a coma to separate thousands and a period as the decimal separator. I understand that Europeans reverse this.)
Of course, I could well be way off base, and all this is obsolete these days. It's just what I was taught back when I had to walk my pet dinosaur upon returning home from grade school.
Annette
I interpret that differently
If I saw "one hundred and one" written I would assume that it meant 101, not 100.1
I personally would not write out a number with decimal places, however if I had to I would write 145.57 as one hundred and forty five point five seven, the same way as I would read the number out loud. I haven't come across the convention of using and to represent the decimal, although I admit grammar was never my best subject.
This may be a regional/national/country variation (I am on the east coast of England). I would tend to put an "and" before the last significant figure:
1,345 - One thousand three hundred and forty five
2,000,298 - Two million two hundred and ninety eight
5,065,567 - Five million sixty five thousand five hundred and sixty seven
2300 - Two thousand three hundred
3,070,000 - Three million and seventy thousand
The only numbers I would normally ever write out in full are one to ten, and then only of expressing a quantity rather a value with units, so £5 or 3 kg I always write with digits. The numbers as written in the original post look wrong to me as they are missing the "and".
The UK uses commas and periods the same as the US in numbers, its the non-English speaking Europeans who put them back to front.
Fivers and £5
...are just the ones that ought to be spelt out in dialogue, as should 3 kg. Does your character say "Five pounds" or "Five quid," "Three kilos" or "Three kilogrammes?" Does everyone in the English-speaking world know what the Pound Sterling symbol, £ represents, or how how it should be combined with a numeral to create a bit of dialogue? Exactly how is ₤* different to £** and where might one see either?
Writers are not accountants, as a general rule, so the monetary precision which is the raison d'être of the accountant is foreign to the writer, who is (or should be) concerned with voice, and how people sound when they speak. A character might write down £5, or $5 if in the USA or Canada, but they will never say that. They will say "five pounds," or "five dollars," or any of a dozen common variants in speech, "five quid," "five bucks," "a fin," "a fiver," "a five," "five simoleons," "five smackeroos," or whatever.
The arabic numeral "5" is a symbol, not a word. As a symbol, in means the same thing in every language of the world. That symbol can be pronounced with equal accuracy as "five," "fünf," "cinq," "cinco," or any of a hundred variations.
The £ is a symbol too. It can be pronounced as "pound," "quid," "lira," or any of many variations. As writers, we should be specific.
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
* Lira, Italy (before the Euro) and elsewhere around the world, including Turkey and Lebanon. Because not every font includes the true Lira symbol, countries which use the Lira often make do with the exact same "pound" symbol used in the UK and elsewhere. So £5 doesn't actually mean much of anything without sufficient context to determine what's being talked about, and does nothing to resolve the many ways in which those symbols can be pronounced, even on the floor of the Exchequer.
** Pound, and elsewhere around the world. The default context in the UK is the Pound Sterling (ISO: GBP, although no longer backed by silver) but other countries also use a denomination they call a "pound" (Indeed, Lira means Pound, being the modern descendant of Latin librum, which is why the other abbreviation for "pound" is "lb.")
Interestingly, the Pound Sterling was at one time the value of one Troy pound (twelve troy ounces) of sterling silver, but inflation has decreased the value of the pound summat. At today's London price fixing, a Troy pound of Silver is about £144 (GBP).
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
That is why
I prefer to pronoounce 125,100.45 as
One hundred twenty five thousand one hundred point forty five. That explicitly states the place of the decimal.
Faraway
Big Closet Top Shelf
Where you can fool around like you want to and most you get is some bemused good ribbing!
Faraway
Big Closet Top Shelf
Where you can fool around like you want to and most you get is some bemused good ribbing!
Hmmmm
How many spots are there on .1 Dalmatians?
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
I don't want to know...
I really don't. Just like I don't want to see that half child that some families are supposed to have.
An interesting reference I found about.com suggests that Brits use and in the middle of numbers, while US doesn't - implying that Brits would say one hundred and one while Americans would say one hundred one.
I've not noticed it that much here.
Another site grammarbook.com doesn't come out and SAY, but it does use and in examples to represent the decimal place.
I couldn't find anywhere that used point, though I have seen it used by people. I don't know that point is that much clearer, as I've seen many Europeans use the coma for the decimal place: (US) 1,234.56 = (EU) 1.234,56 . Of course, I could be way off there, as elsewhere.
Two other points.
1) Just because a rule exists for writing, it may not be followed or sound good. Ignoring a rule intentionally is one thing, ignorance another. A well known example: "To boldly go where no one has gone before" or "To go boldly where no one has gone before". As I understand it most grammarians would say the later is preferred, as the verb is not split. However, Star Trek got a LOT of mileage out of the former.
2) Word use and approved punctuation does (generally slowly - lately) change over time. I learned the stuff I wrote earlier on pronouncing numbers back in the '60s. Rules may well have been relaxed, changed or simply been ignored since then.
Annette
The point of the matter
I've always referred to the decimal separator as "point", and Festival seems to agree. (The link is to an online demo - interestingly some voices include 'and' while others don't). With the point in place, the reader will pronounce 3.14 as "three point one four", with a comma instead, you'll hear "three" (pause) "one four". I expect Windoze Narrator would probably offer a similar treatment.
Anyway, surely the best rule of thumb is encode numbers, and thousand / decimal separators in whatever form is likely to be understood by the majority of your target audience. For something like a government website, you'd want to ensure the content was as accessible as possible (even to the extent of offering default and high contrast stylesheets and running the pages through both Lynx and a screenreader), whereas for a UGC (user generated content) fiction site appealing to a niche audience, the vast majority of which have some degree of vision and have some comprehension of the English Language (either the native, Old World version or the New World dialect), a few more liberties can be taken with presentation and style.
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
numbers?
in school i was taught to use spelled out numbers for one, two three up to twenty and then on for round tens, thirty, fourty and so on up to one hundred, to be continued with hundreds, then thousands and millions.
some exceptions:
dates are always in numbers, unless the month is spelled out.
prizes like $2.95, though $3.00 might be spelled $3.- or simply $3
weights and dimensions
There's a Reason They Call It Creative
There's a reason they call It creative writing, 'cause you need to be creative.
Rules are good in most cases. They do serve as a guide and help keep us from getting too out of hand. But no one who fancies themselves to be a creative writer should ever shackle themselves to rules. For Pete's sake, be creative, not a literary bureaucrat. Use your imagination, frequently and imaginatively.
This is fiction, not a laundry list.
Nancy Cole
"You may be what you resolve to be."
T.J. Jackson
Creativity
True. Perhaps the most famous example is Flowers for Algernon, in which Daniel Keyes, the author, uses graded violations of the rules to show first the improved intellect of a "challenged" man after being subjected to an experimental treatment, and then his gradual deterioration when the treatment proves impermanent. But one doesn't rewrite Flowers for Algernon every day. It's been done.
Language is a set of rules, and a good writer knows enough not to get in the way of the story by needlessly violating rules that help to facilitate understanding.
Which of the above sentences was more pleasant to read?
Unless there are very good reasons for a reader to make the effort of deciphering violations of the code, they'll toss the writing aside, because it hurts our brains to stumble across the errors. Every time we stumble, we have a further reason to lay the writing aside.
An English fellow (well, Northumbrian) named Alcuin (Ealhwine) invented modern lower case conventions in the court of Charlemagne (Charles the Great) -- King of the Franks and the first Holy Roman Emperor from 768 until his death, the Continental equivalent of King Arthur, and the central subject of the Matter of France -- but we're so annoyed by violations of the rules regarding their use that it's a settled rule of "nettiquette" that it constitutes a rude assault upon the reader, and it will result in people ignoring what one says in certain forums (fora, for purists). It may also result in being banned.
Which of the above examples seems more likely to be found in well-formed writing?
Every time we drop out of English into a different code, our brains have to reset to handle a different type of signal, something like wandering between English and Chinese. We have to decipher the numbers, quite literally, because they don't follow the same rules we use to form and understand words. They also don't have capital and lowercase forms in most fonts, so they violate our internalized rules about the alternation of case in a properly-formed sentence.
Just look at the words we use to describe arabic numerals, "figure," "cipher," from the Arabic word for "zero," many of them have alternative meanings that involve the notion of "figuring things out," or "solving a puzzle." Cracking the code is not what most writers want their readers involved in, because many people are impatient with these sorts of activities.
That's why style guides exist, and there are many of them, the Chicago Manual of Style is only one, albeit my own favourite. Take your pick, but follow it.
Here are a few of the most popular:
At least one if these should be on every writer's desk, along with a good dictionary.
Cheers,
Puddin'
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style