1. Number versus numeral. First things first, what is the difference between a number and a numeral? A number is an abstract concept while a numeral is a symbol used to express that number. “Three,” “3″ and “III” are all symbols used to express the same number (or the concept of “threeness”). One could say that the difference between a number and its numerals is like the difference between a person and her name.
2. Spell small numbers out. The small numbers, such as whole numbers smaller than ten, should be spelt out. That’s one rule you can count on. If you don’t spell numbers out it will look like you’re sending an instant message, and you want to be more formal than that in your writing.
3. No other standard rule: Experts don’t always agree on other rules. Some experts say that any one-word number should be written out. Two-word numbers should be expressed in figures. That is, they say you should write out twelve or twenty. But not 24.
4. Using the comma. In English, the comma is used as a separator for thousands (and the period as a decimal separator), to make large numbers easier to read. So write the size of Alaska as 571,951 square miles instead of 571951 square miles. In Continental Europe the opposite is true, periods are used to separate large numbers and the comma is used for decimals. Finally, the International Systems of Units (SI) recommends that a space should be used to separate groups of three digits, and both the comma and the period should be used only to denote decimals, like $13 200,50 (the comma part is a mess… I know).
5. Don’t start a sentence with a numeral. Make it “Fourscore and seven years ago,” not “4 score and 7 years ago.” That means you might have to rewrite some sentences: “Fans bought 400,000 copies the first day” instead of “400,000 copies were sold the first day.”
6. Centuries and decades should be spelt out. Use the Eighties or nineteenth century.
7. Percentages and recipes. With everyday writing and recipes, you can use digits, like “4% of the children” or “Add 2 cups of brown rice.” In formal writing, however, you should spell the percentage out like “12 percent of the players” (or “twelve percent of the players,” depending on your preference as explained in point three).
8. If the number is rounded or estimated, spell it out. Rounded numbers over a million are written as a numeral plus a word. Use “About 400 million people speak Spanish natively,” instead of “About 400,000,000 people speak Spanish natively.” If you’re using the exact number, you’d write it out, of course.
9. Two numbers next to each other. It can be confusing if you write “7 13-year-olds”, so write one of them as a numeral, like “seven 13-year-olds”. Pick the number that has the fewest letters.
10. Ordinal numbers and consistency. Don’t say “He was my 1st true love,” but rather “He was my first true love.” Be consistent within the same sentence. If my teacher has 23 beginning students, she also has 18 advanced students, not eighteen advanced students.
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In my opinion, this article is really useful. People sometimes ignore simple rules of writing numbers because they think it is irrelevant in writing a text or essay. This article mentions the difference between numbers and numerals. Number is an abstract concept, meanwhile a numeral is a symbol used to express that number, such as “three”, “3”, and “III”. Another rule in writing numbers, is that you can’t just write the numbers that are less than ten. For these numbers, you must spell them out. By doing this, the text or essay that you are writing will look more formal. I myself sometimes forgot about this rule. It is quite simple but really crucial in writing a formal essay or text. I hope this article can help anyone that are writing their essay, text, motivation letter, or a work application letter. Because simple things like this can make your letter more formal.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I believe that this article is beneficial to readers because this would help them to remember the conventions of using numbers and numerals in the English language. Since most people would usually mix the use of numbers and numerals, this article would help readers comprehend the use of such concepts in various contexts. Some of the interesting rules that I have been reminded of by this article is the fact that we should not begin a sentence with numbers and that one-word numbers should be spelled out, while two-word numbers should be conveyed in figures. By knowing and remembering these conventions, it would be easier for readers to write formal texts without deviating from the rules. This would make the texts more concise and proper, which would make it easier to read the texts by the reader of this article. Therefore, this article is no doubt useful to those looking to write formal essays or letters that would simply be perfected by following such rules.
ReplyDeleteWell, to be honest, last year i did not even know about the rules about numbers, like i do not think that there are some rules regarding numbers.
ReplyDeleteThere were some misconceptions about numbers in writing regading to my view in last year.
First, i have not recognized that numbers below 11 in english writing can not be expressed in numbers sign, but words. For Instance, 8 becomes eight or 5 becomes five. Second, using the commas when its up than 1000. I think it is my habit to use fullstop or period to signal the decimals. So i thought for all these years i was right using fullstop, but unfortunately i was not. Third, I have just known that we should not start a sentence by numbers. For example, rather than writing 900,000 people have affected by diseases, we could write, diseases have affected 900,000 people.
My misunderstanding might comes from a literal translation from Bahasa Indonesia to English, whereas there are some grammar in english that do not add up in and relate with Indonesian grammar.
It’s interesting that the rules for writing numbers and numerals in English are similar to the one in Bahasa Indonesia such as to spell small numbers out and don’t start a sentence with a numeral. I’m not really sure about the other rules, but the fourth rule is the one that is really different when you compare English to Bahasa Indonesia because in English the comma is used as a separator for thousands and the period is used as a separator for decimals. Meanwhile, in Bahasa Indonesia, it’s completely the opposite, where the comma is used as a separator for decimals and the period is used as a separator for thousands. This was actually quite confusing for me, because during high school, I learned math in English, so I used the comma as a separator for thousands and the period as a separator for decimals. But then in the third year of high school, I studied for the National Exam (Ujian Nasional or also known as UN) where all of the math problems were in Bahasa Indonesia, so I had to use the comma as a separator for thousands and the period as a separator for decimals. It was a little hard for me as I often mistook a comma as a period and a period as a comma.
ReplyDeleteThroughout my entire time of writing stories and academic reports, I’ve always written numbers in symbols ( 5 kids, or 7 institutions, for example). I wasn’t aware of the rules of writing numbers, and this article has pretty much revealed the truth and crumbled my writing style. I’ve done most of them correctly (I think) but the 2nd, 6th, and 7th rules are the ones I often violate.
ReplyDeleteOut of the three, I think I’m a regular at violating the 2nd and 7th rules. I had a social science study back in high school, the subject was named Liberal studies (I don’t have to explain what the subject is, the title has said for itself). Most of the times, we were working on essays and information skimming. But the thing that I’d typically write in my articles was something similar to this.
‘… according to source 2, the demographics of victims in China’s cultural revolution involved mostly adults, especially teachers.’
Or this.
‘… The graph in source B shows that a 15% increase in income from households would cause a higher consumption rate. This can cause the market to…’
Do you see how horrid I was on leisurely and ignorantly breaking the rule that I’ve no idea on? It gave me goosebumps…
Thank you for the post, it really was informative.
These standard rules feels like something a lot of native speakers already realize, but have never written the rules themselves, similar to the order of adjectives (quantity or number, quality or opinion, size,age, shape, color, proper adjective, purpose or qualifier). For a lot of people, they have never been taught these rules, but have been instinctively been using these guidelines for most of their time in writing. However, these guidelines may still prove to be useful for those who are studying English as a second language, as these instinctive principles would not have been inside a child that did not grow up with the English language. Honestly I am not even sure if my hypothesis is correct as I do consider myself neither a native speaker nor a second language speaker due to peculiar upbringing. Nevertheless, these written rules should help to prove useful for those who are confused in numerical formats.
ReplyDelete