USING NUMBERS IN TEXT:

Selected Guidelines

Most organizations and technical fields recognize the guidelines below. However, in specific writing
situations, determine whether your organization or research area has a particular set of rules that you
are expected to follow.

 Use WORDS for numbers (spell them out) in these situations . . .

1. Use words for isolated non-technical quantities between zero and ten:

three persons six whales

one reason nine compounds
The movie will begin in ten minutes. Please pass three or four chips.

2. Use words if a number begins a sentence:

NOTE: Hyphenate two-word numbers from 21 to 99.

Twenty-one of the instruments had been damaged.

Thirty-seven hectares was the agreed-upon size of the lot.
OR REVISE The agreed-upon size of the lot was 37 hectares.

3. Use words for short common fractions that are used alone:
NOTE 1: Mixed numbers are always expressed as numerals.
NOTE 2: Hyphenate the two words that comprise the fraction.

He refused to accept his one-fourth share.

More than one-third of us accepted the challenge.
[BUT We offered him a discount of 2-1/2 percent.]

4. Use words for approximations or round numbers up to a million that may be expressed in one
or two words, unless you want to emphasize them:

She will probably retire when she is in her early seventies.

The auditorium will accommodate several thousand people.
Approximately ten thousand people attended the concert.
The infestation that affected the park will cost us a few thousand dollars.

5. Use words for ordinal numbers (first, second, third, ...) that can be expressed as one word.
EXCEPTIONS: See section below on Dates.

nineteenth century
the third time
We are starting our fortieth year of operations.
He lives on Seventh Street in Kitchener.
[BUT We are moving into our 41st year of operations.
Our office is on the corner of 32nd Street and First Avenue.]

1
 Use NUMERALS for numbers in these situations . . .

A. Use numerals for isolated numbers of 11 or more:

300 persons 12 whales

35-percent increase 28-year-old tractor
The Nabokov file has been missing for 30 days.
Our firm recently printed 1350 copies of the sales brochure.

B. Use numerals for most technical quantities (> or < 10), especially if a unit of measurement is
included. The “x” sign can be used for “by” in the sentence when comparing dimensions:

3 feet 43 219 square miles

12 grams 36 hectares
Our smallest samples are 6 by 8 by 3 centimetres.
Most order either the 8-1/2 x 11 inch paper or the 8-1/2 x 14 inch sheets.

C. Use numerals for decimals and percentages, and spell out the word “percent” in text.
NOTE: For clarity in numbers less than one, use “0” as a placeholder to the left of the decimal.

3.14 0.146
1013.065 0.007 percent
Wanda typed the sentence in 4.05 seconds.
Last week we used 35 percent of the sheet metal in stock, this week 0.09 percent.
Please add these figures: 2.92, 3.75, 0.1, and 5.12.
We spent only 0.8 percent of our gross sales for advertising.

D. Use numerals for all mixed numbers, including stock market quotations.
NOTE: A hyphen is used for clarity between the whole number and the fraction.

Last month’s revenues were down by 4-1/2 percent.

The common stock in question closed yesterday at 25-7/8.

E. Use numerals for degrees of temperature:

In our freezer the temperature is now -5 ºC (or minus 5 degrees Celcius).

F. Use numerals with titles of figures and tables and for page or chapter numbers:

Table 13.4 Chapter 17

pages 230-239
See the data presented in Figure 1 on page 7.

G. Use numerals when the numbers act as nouns:

Grade 12 Channel 42
Highway 401 Suite 105
Volume 27 Number 36 (or No. 36)

H. Use numerals to express time (hour of the day) when A.M. / a.m. or P.M. / p.m. follows.
However, use words when “o’clock” is written:

The class was in session from 10 a.m. until 1 p.m.

Our meeting began at 9:15 A.M. and adjourned at 3:00 P.M.
They met at seven o’clock.
2
I. Use numerals for street addresses, including ordinal street names above ten:

18 Creek Ave., Apt. 4 1290 12th Street

P.O. Box 1584 [BUT 5 Fifth Street]

J. Use numerals for amounts of money.

 Exception: The amount “one cent” should have both words spelled out.
 Do NOT use the symbol “¢” in text.
 For other amounts less than a dollar, use the significant numeral and then write out
the word “cents.”
However, use “$0.09” for consistency when amount is in list with other dollar
amounts.
 Omit the decimal point and both cent place-holding zeros when an isolated number
expresses an even amount in dollars.

You can buy this knife for only 89 cents and the fork for an extra one cent.
The irate customer asked for a refund of her $49.50.
We have only $25 in petty cash.

        

 

 SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS when using Numbers in Text . . .

 Combinations. Use BOTH words and numerals together in these cases.

A. For back-to-back numbers, write out the number that takes the fewer words. If both
have same number of words, write out the first number:
NOTE: Hyphenate the second number and its unit when they are used as a compound
adjective.

six 3-inch nails fourteen 12-foot ladders

3012 five-piece starter sets
We plan to build 24 twelve-room residences on this lot.
How long will it take you to copy those 112 ninety-eight-page reports?

B. For isolated, round numbers of more than a million, use the significant numeral and
then spell out “million” or “billion” to make reading easier:

14 million light-years $64.3 billion

The winning candidate received 1.2 million votes.
This tax legislation would increase revenue by US$7 million

C. For numbers in legal contracts or in documents intended for international readers, first
express the number in words, then add the numeral form in parentheses:

five (5) relays forty-two (42) days

3
 Our Paris office still owes thirty-seven thousand Canadian dollars (C$37,000).

 Consistency. “When in Rome, do as the Romans.”

When referring to similar units within a sentence, use the same form (either all words or all
numerals) for each number.

On Tuesday, the attendance was 14; on Wednesday, it was 7.

The inventory shows 21 ranges, 9 refrigerators, and 10 dryers.
Our filters sell for $5.50, $3.00, and $0.98.
[BUT The 32 tables sold in five days.
Last week, seven departments placed orders for 12 pumps each.]

 Comma vs Space as Separator. With non-metric units, use commas to separate groups
of three figures. When working in metric units, use spaces rather than commas.
NOTE: In many countries, the comma—rather than the period—serves as the decimal marker.
Therefore, when working in an international environment, use the space recommended in the
SI (metric) guidelines to avoid confusion. See “Guidelines for Writing SI…”

In four-digit numerals, the comma/space is optional. See example below.

372 060 kg 372,060 pounds
52 789.05 m 639,496.23053 feet
5200 or 5 200 [comma/space option] $8 235 350.99 (SI context)
9.005 04 L $46,450.25 (non-SI context)

 Dates.
A. Avoid expressing the month as a number, as in “03/07/10” (is this 7 March 2010? 3
July 2010? 10 July 2003?). Workplace and regional practices vary, so the all-numeric
form is ambiguous. In technical environments, use the SI (Système international)
form that moves by decreasing order of magnitude from year to month to day: YYYY-
MM-DD or YYYY MM DD:

2002-03-12
2003 03 12 (without hyphens)

Alternatively, spell out the month in full or use the abbreviated form:

7 March 2010
Dec. 19, 2014

B. Use the numeric ordinal form (1st, 2nd, 3rd, . . .) only when the day is alone (no month)
or if the day is separated from the month by other words.

Business has been booming since the 9th.

We signed the contract on the 26th of July.
[BUT Construction begins on July 26. The final report is due on 22 April 2013.]

 Superscripts / Subscripts. Use them as needed in formulae or expressions.

H2O / 28 m3 / E=mc2 / vrocket / vobserver / 104=10 000 / 24oC / (x2 + y2)2

Last updated 2016 / S. Gurholt Adapted from: Barry, Robert E. and Pat Ellison. Business English for the 21st Century.
The Canadian Style: A Guide to Writing and Editing.

4
Markel, Michael and H. Holmes. Technical Writing: Situations and Strategies.
Rubens, Philip. Science and Technical Writing: A Manual of Style .
Wysocki, Anne Frances, Dennis A. Lynch, and Susan M. Doyle. The DK Handbook.

5
Guidelines for Writing SI / METRIC Units and Quantities
The embarrassing experience of the Mars Climate Orbiter in 1999 is a classic illustration of what can happen if units are not
specified. Engineers who build the spacecraft specified its thrust in pounds, which are British units. NASA scientists thought
the information was in newtons, which are metric units. The miscalculation was overlooked through years of design,
building, and launch, and the spacecraft missed its target by roughly 60 miles. --Jane E. Miller

The International System of Units (abbreviated SI from Fr: Le Système international d'unités) is the
modern form of the metric system and is the world's most widely used system of measurement, used in both
everyday commerce and science. It is a coherent system of units of measurement built around 7 base units
(metre/kilogram/second/ampere/kelvin/candela/mole), 22 named and an indeterminate number of unnamed
derived units (e.g. C=K - 273.15, N=kg⋅m⋅s−2), and a set of prefixes that act as decimal-based multipliers.

Published in 1960 by the General Conference on Weights and Measures (GCWM), SI is an evolving system. As
the technology of measurement progresses and as the precision of measurements improves, the GCWM meets
periodically to create prefixes and units, modify unit definitions, and standardize the rules of writing and
presenting measurements.

The SI system has been adopted by most countries in the developed (OECD) world, though within English-
speaking countries the adoption has not been universal. In the United States, metric units are not commonly
used outside of science, medicine, and the government; however, US customary units are officially defined in
terms of SI units. The United Kingdom has officially adopted a partial metrication policy, with no intention of
replacing imperial units entirely. Canada has adopted it for most governmental and scientific purposes, but
imperial units are still legally permitted and remain in common use throughout many sectors of Canadian
society, particularly in the buildings, trades, and railways sectors.

a) SI units (e.g. kilogram, millilitre, megawatt) have standard symbols/abbreviations (kg, ml, MW) that do not
use a period/full stop (.), unless the rules of grammar demand one for another reason, such as denoting
the end of a sentence.

b) Units written in words or their abbreviations are preceded by a space:

2.21 kg 7.3×102 m2 22 ml

Symbols are usually placed immediately after the number with no intervening space:
The pilot read the bearing 53° 28′ 12″ and set the course.
Production capacity rose to 89% following the restructuring.
The average temperature in July was 28oC, but it dropped to 17oC in September.

c) A prefix is part of the unit, and its symbol is prepended to the unit symbol without a space. Compound
prefixes are not allowed.
k in km M in MPa G in GHz

d) Symbols for derived units formed by multiplication are joined with a centre dot (·) or a non-breaking space:
N·m or N m

e) Symbols for derived units formed by division are joined with a solidus (/), or given as a negative exponent:
"metre per second" can be written m/s, m s−1, m·s−1
Only one solidus should be used:
kg/(m·s2) and kg·m−1·s−2 are acceptable, but kg/m/s2 is ambiguous and unacceptable

f) The first letter of symbols for units derived from the name of a person is written in upper case; otherwise,
symbols are written in lower case:
Pa (symbol for the pascal, named after Blaise Pascal) T (tesla after Nicola Tesla)
But t (the symbol for tonne)
Exception: The symbol for “litre” is usually written with an uppercase "L," to avoid confusion
between the lowercase letter "l" and the numeral "1."

g) The same symbol/abbreviation is used for singular and plural of a measurement unit:
1 kg / 25 kg (NOT kgs)
6
 h) Uppercase and lowercase prefixes are not interchangeable, i.e. 3 mW and 3 MW represent two different
quantities: milliwatt and megawatt respectively.

i) Avoid a line-break inside a number, inside a compound unit, or between a number and its unit.

j) Caution! The value of "billion" and "trillion" vary from language to language, depending on whether the
“long scale” or the “short scale” (see below) is used. Thus, for an international audience, clarify these terms
with the full numeric form.

Long scale: Every new term greater than million is a million times the previous term. Thus, billion means a
million millions (1012), trillion means a million billions (1018), and so on.

Short scale: Every new term greater than million is a thousand times the previous term. Thus, billion means a
thousand millions (109), trillion means a thousand billions (1012), and so on.

k) Spaces are used as a thousands separator in SI:

576 000 000 647 109.28987

NOTE: Internationally, the symbol for the decimal marker may be either a point or a comma or another
mark. Approximately 42 countries (roughly 60% of the world's population) use a dot "." as the decimal
marker, while approximately 67 countries (roughly 24% of the world's population) use a comma "," as the
decimal marker. (See Table 1 for variations.)

Consider your Audience! If an international audience is expected, specify the chosen style as the document begins.

Table 1: Same Number—Different Formats, by Country (Varied Usage of the Decimal Marker and the
Thousands Separator) Use of the decimal mark and the thousands separator in various countries that use the Arabic numeral system.

STYLE COUNTRY
Canada (English-speaking, unofficial), China, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Korea,
1,234,567.89 Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, United
Kingdom, United States

1 234 567.89 SI style (English version), Australia, English Canada, China

SI style (French version), Albania, Belgium, Bosnia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark,
Estonia, Finland, France, French Canada, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latin Europe,
1 234 567,89 Netherlands (non-currency numbers, see below), Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia,
Sweden, Switzerland

Ireland, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, United
1,234,567·89 Kingdom, United States (older, typically hand written)

Brazil, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Italy, Netherlands (currency), Portugal, Romania,
1.234.567,89 Slovenia, Spain, Sweden

1˙234˙567,89 Germany, Italy, Romania

12,34,567.89 India

1'234'567.89 Switzerland (currency), International Requisite

1'234'567,89 Italy (handwriting), Switzerland (handwriting)

1.234.567'89 Spain (handwriting)

123,4567.89 China (alternative), Japan (alternative)

Table adapted from “Decimal Mark.” Wikipedia. 31 October 2016, at 19:08 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark>. 16 Nov 2016.
Document Adapted from: “International System of Units: General Rules.” Wikipedia. 23 October 2016. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units>. 7 Nov 2016.
Rubens, Philip. Science and Technical Writing: A Manual of Style .