Thursday, September 25, 2008

Episode 100- How to Write Numbers

Most style guides tell you to spell out the numbers 1-9 and use numerals for all the rest of the numbers. But there are many different style guides that tell you to do different things.
If you are writing a technical paper and you come across a sentence with 2 numbers in it then you would write the numbers the same way. Unless you have 2 numbers right next to each other then you would spell out one and write the other one numerally. It makes it a lot easier to read. When you put a number at the beginning of a sentence you should write out the word unless it is a ridiculous number then you would reword the sentence so the number isn't at the beginning. But usually you would write the numeral if it is the year but some people still recommend you use words even for years. When writing dialog you should spell out the numbers just so it looks better.

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