Ever notice how a book might write out someone’s age as twenty-two while a newspaper article about the same person would say he’s 22? Ever wonder why fifty-five has a hyphen but two hundred does not, or why that holds true even when you put them together and get two hundred fifty-five? Ever notice that your local newspaper sometimes refers to grades “nine through 12,” but 9-year-olds are always 9 even though their years on the planet add up to nine? Ever wonder why some buildings are located on First Street while others are on 1st Street? Ever see in the same book a sentence that begins with the year seventeen seventy-six and a sentence that contains the year 1776? Ever wonder why the same book will say there were a thousand cats until, a few weeks later, there were 1,284 cats? Ever fantasize about writing vividly threatening letters to every editor in the country?
No? Good. That means that we probably won’t be seeing you on America’s Most Wanted anytime soon. And it probably also means that you have no idea the lengths that language experts have gone to in order to make an easy subject incredibly complicated.
Most of these discrepancies about numbers have nothing to do with right and wrong. They’re just a matter of style. And while the Associated Press, Chicago, and other writers of guidelines are conspiring to complicate simplicity itself, all you really need to do is pick an approach and remember to stick with it. If you’re writing a cover letter and you spell out the number of employers who have not fired you (three), remember to spell out the number who have (nine).
If you’re writing something longer than a short letter, though, you might find that spelling everything out gets a little cumbersome, especially if you’ve been fired one thousand four hundred sixty-five times. Then perhaps AP’s guidelines are for you.
According to AP, you should spell out numbers from zero through nine, and use numerals for everything larger. Ages are the exception; they’re always numeric. As in the example of “grades nine through 12” above, this sometimes gets a little awkward. But if you have to draw a line somewhere, 10 is as good a place as any.
Is it really that easy? Of course not. There’s another rule. Anytime you start a sentence with a number, spell it out even if it’s one that would otherwise be expressed in numerals. “Fifty-five out of 56 employers agree I’m worth keeping around for a month.” If you’re on board with the AP way, years are an exception. Even at the beginning of a sentence, “1776” is not written out.
Is it really that easy? At this point, I’m going to say yes, with one little addition: Really big numbers sometimes get a mixture of words and numerals, which is why you would surely write “$150 million” without having to be told that big numbers sometimes get a mixture of words and numerals.
Is it really that easy? Uh, um, yes. Really this time. But just for fun, let’s take a quick look at how books do it.
Spell out “whole numbers from one through one hundred, round numbers, and any number beginning a sentence,” the Chicago Manual says. That’s why when you have a round number of cats, you’d write it out: “I have one thousand cats.” But when it’s a big number that’s not so round, use numerals: “I have 1,284 cats.”
Is that really all there is to it? Well, because you’ve already been subjected to a thousand cruel rules, I’m going to say yes, just to avoid piling on another 1,284.