Lay Out Numbers Article For Free

Numbers up to and including ten should be spelled out in full. Numbers after and including 11 should be written using numerals. Very large numbers should be written by combining a figure and a word such as million or billion. Fractions should generally be written in full and hyphenated in prose.

For larger numbers, it is acceptable to use either numerals or words depending on context (e.g. a thousand people/1,000 people), but you should always use numerals in technical writing, e.g. 200,000 km. For less precise larger numbers, the written form is better (e.g. several thousand).

For example, the APA style guide recommends writing small numbers from one to nine in figures and then writing the further numbers in words. On the other hand, the Chicago Manual recommends writing numbers from one to hundred in figures and using words for numbers beyond that.

For large numbers, you may use a combination of numerals and words. Example: 4.5 million. In general use numerals with % signs, however, you may spell out percentages or amounts of money if you can do so in three words or less. Example: five dollars, forty-five percent, sixty-eight cents.

Numbers up to nine should always be written in words, anything higher than nine can be written in numerals. Alternatively, some guides suggest that if you can write the number in two words or fewer then use words rather than numerals.

A simple rule for using numbers in writing is that small numbers ranging from one to ten (or one to nine, depending on the style guide) should generally be spelled out. Larger numbers (i.e., above ten) are written as numerals.

Scientific notation is a way of writing very large or very small numbers. A number is written in scientific notation when a number between 1 and 10 is multiplied by a power of 10. For example, 650,000,000 can be written in scientific notation as 6.5 ? 10^8.