Writing numbers is easy to do.  There are some common rules that you need to follow that will make your writing stand out and look more professional.  Look below and I’ll explain some of the most common rules for writing numbers so that your papers and presentations will be absolutely perfect!

 Let’s look at the first four rules for writing numbers. Simple Numbers 1-9 should be spelled.  For example, one, two, three, four, five, etc.  Look how we do this in a sentence; John has three cats.   Simple Numbers 10 to Infinity should be written 10, 11, 20, 3,000,000, etc.
For example; Mary has 2,000,000 cats.

 We also need to use a hyphen if it is an uneven number.  Uneven numbers are those numbers that don’t divide by 10, or are greater than 20.  So, for words like 25, we would write them out as twenty-five. But, what if we use these two sentences next to each other?  If we do that, then we need to use the same format for both sentences and be consistent.  This means that you can “break” the rules. Look below to see how.

  John has three cats, and Mary has two thousand cats.  She feeds them twenty-four kilos of cat food every day.

Simple Fractions should always be spelled and a hyphen needs to be used between the fractions.  For example, ½ should be written as one-half, ¾ should be written as three-quarters, etc. Mixed Fractions should be written as numbers.  This makes them easier to read and understand.  For example, if I had 5 ½ shares of a company stock, I would write “I have 5 ½ shares of company stock.”

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