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Questions tagged [numbers]

Questions relating to the use of numbers or numerals in English.

A number is the mathematical representation of a quantity, such as 2, 3.141 or 0. A numeral is the word representing a number, for example, two, three point one four one or zero.

Use this tag for questions about using either numbers or numerals in prose, and for questions on which to use when.

609 questions
29
votes
5 answers

Does "five hundredth" mean 0.05 or 1/500?

What does "five hundredth of a second" mean? To me, "five hundredth" means 1/500 or 0.002. But I've seen people use it to mean 0.05 in sports (e.g. Athlete won the 100m sprint by five hundredth of a second). I think 0.05 should really be "five…
fezzuu
  • 293
28
votes
5 answers

How can I write out 1.5?

I would like to write out (1.5) in words and also (5.0). How would I do that?
user8400
  • 451
20
votes
7 answers

Is it proper grammar to refer to four digit number in hundreds?

Sometimes you will hear people refer to four digit numbers in terms of hundreds. For example, sometimes people will say fifteen hundred when talking about the number 1500. Is this proper? What are the rules of usage? In my personal experience, the…
epotter
  • 301
18
votes
13 answers

How do you correctly say large numbers

I saw a post on The daily What which links to a video where a person counts from 1 to 100,000. Is he saying a large portion of the numbers wrong? Back in high school my algebra teacher was extremely picky. If we were going to say the number 135, we…
Zoredache
  • 281
15
votes
2 answers

Is there a system for creating words for ordinal numbers?

I'm not sure if "sequential" is the right word, but what is the system for creating a sequence of numbers like this: primary (as in 1st in choice or importance) secondary (as in 2nd in choice or importance) tertiary (as in 3rd in choice or…
Eimantas
  • 1,752
12
votes
3 answers

"A million and a half" vs. "one and a half million"

Every so often, I come across the phrase "a million and a half X" - which always strikes me as strange: it suggests 1000000.5 of the thing. I was taught to use instead "one and a half million" to be unambiguous. Is the first form actually…
Alex
  • 5,032
11
votes
5 answers

36 thousands or 36 thousand?

I'm almost sure it's 36 thousands, since we're talking about 36 not 1. But I'm in doubt because 36 already indicates that it's more than 1, so maybe, just maybe, it could be 36 thousand?
Axonn
  • 927
11
votes
3 answers

Does the nth century contain the (100n)th year?

I am given to understand that 2016 AD is a part of the 21st Century. Is it the case that 2100 AD is a part of the 21st century too? Or is it a part of the 22nd century?
Agnishom Chattopadhyay
  • 337
11
votes
6 answers

Is it improper English to read the number 1100 as "eleven hundred"?

For numbers between 1000 and 9999 is it proper English for the word "hundred" to be used? For example is it necessarily wrong to say "eleven hundred" when referring to 1100?
Celeritas
  • 2,910
10
votes
6 answers

Is there a term to denote writing numbers in words rather than as digits?

Often when writing we would like numbers to be written out fully e.g. thirty rather than in digits e.g. 30. Is there a name for this kind of representation?
WilliamMartin
  • 213
9
votes
6 answers

Saying a number digit by digit

Is it okay in an informal conversation to say a number digit by digit? For example, is it okay to say "two five six kilobytes" instead of "two hundred and fifty-six kilobytes"?
cahen
  • 201
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8
votes
5 answers

Why are Roman numerals still used?

Why are Roman numerals still used today primarily on clocks and film titles?
Ambo100
  • 1,894
7
votes
2 answers

Usage of "second/third/fourth ... last"

In German there is a pattern for counting items from the end of a list. The last item is "das letzte", the one before is "das vorletzte", the one before that is "das vorvorletzte" and for each other item there's just another "vor" added. While…
AndreKR
  • 299
6
votes
4 answers

A few more "hundred" vs "hundreds"

If we're talking about 8 hundred (an exact number of hundreds) we use the singular for the ordinal. But what if we use an unspecified quantity such as "more". Or, I just said it: "number of hundreds". So I reckon it's "more hundreds", "more…
Axonn
  • 927
6
votes
5 answers

Number "x" to "x" ascending or descending?

edit: sorry if this is a duplicate - I tried searching but didn't find anything! Was reading Do Fathers Matter? by Paul Raeburn and came across this sentence: They tell us that among the australopithecines — the earliest members of the human…
Mou某
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