Search results for “numerals”

The topic of when to write numbers out and when to use numerals concerns and confounds a lot of people. America’s two most influential style and usage guides have different approaches: The Associated Press Stylebook recommends spelling out the numbers zero through nine and using numerals thereafter—until one million is reached. Here are four examples …

Many readers have asked me why people write numbers this way: Example: We will need 220 (two hundred twenty) chairs. While it is often unnecessary to have both numerals and words for the same number, and can come off as pretentious, there are two reasons for using both: 1. You are more likely to make …

The human brain contains 100 billion neurons, 400 miles of capillaries, 100,000 miles of axons, and an estimated 100 trillion synaptic connections. Scientists estimate that if the modern human brain were a computer, its storage would be up to 2,500 terabytes (as of 2023, the world's largest commercial hard drive is 100TB). During an average …

We are familiar with numbers and the function they serve: We use and look at them just about every day. Recognizable enough in our checkbooks and calculators, numbers also have their own categories in writing. For example, the following sentences contain both ordinal and cardinal numbers: 1. Donetta took first place in the spelling bee. …

Percentages are common in our daily communication. They express groups of numbers in ways that let us quickly interpret them and relate them to one another. At the same time, we might wonder how we should present these figures in our writing. Do we use 10 per cent, 10 percent, or 10%? Let's review some …

Numbers can often present different style questions in American English. When should we spell them, and when shouldn't we? In particular, what are ordinal numbers and what are cardinal numbers, and how do we treat them? Mastering these distinctions will refine your precision in your daily writing. For this discussion, we'll review style guidance from …

For some people, punctuation in English might be a fuss over details. For others, it provides vital markers for clear, precise, and eloquent writing. For yet others, a missing apostrophe can represent a great expense. In October 2020, an Australian man claimed in a Facebook post that a real estate agent did not pay his …

Contractions in English are the shortening of words, phrases, or numerals by omitting characters and replacing them with an apostrophe. The apostrophe represents the missing letters or numbers. You likely use contractions daily in your communications. In writing and speech, they help us save time in exchanging thoughts and ideas. They conserve space and length …

Our exploration of American English strives to venture even further than the principles that guide writing with precision and eloquence. We are also interested in the language variances beyond what we accept as common for information exchange. For example, we know that United States can be abbreviated, often as either US or U.S. One might …

We're all aware of how vital marked and measured time is to guiding and structuring our days. How then do we treat it in precise and careful writing? We offered some guidelines in our updated April 2017 article Writing Dates and Times. We'll expand on those here by delving deeper into the most recent editions of …