Talk:English numerals

message: This is wikibooks: stuff. --Menchi 02:01, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Belongs in wikipedia? 

message: I don't agree with the dates section. As a Briton, I might say the twenty-ninth of January, 2004 but I'm just as likely to say January the twenty-ninth, 2004.  I agree that I would not say January twenty-ninth, 2004. -- Derek Ross
::Feel free to correct that then. However, I have yet to see a Briton write "January 29th". Would you actually write the date thus? If not, perhaps it should be mentioned that in speech, it can be different. (Is this page about naming written numbers or any numbers, though?)
:::It's true that I would generally write "29th January" but I would quite happily say the 29th of January on one occasion and January, the 29th on another, as would most Britons.
::As for the the you've inserted, it isn't actually missing. It is implied (and was hence bolded in the 'how it is said' section). Since there is no real authority to perscribe English use, I suppose either version should work – it is just that I've always been taught not to write the the in front of the date. Might it be put in brackets? Sinuhe 08:33, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think that there are two cases here. If the date stands alone (on a cheque for instance), it should certainly be written "29th January, 2004".  However if it is part of a sentence, my opinion is that it should be written "I will visit you on the 29th of January, 2004". I certainly would not feel comfortable missing out "the", although I might well miss out "of". Perhaps others, like yourself, think differently. -- Derek Ross 00:38, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I've tried to put this in (alongside additional examples), with a bit of help from Oxford and Cambridge dictionaries (apparently, they recommend that the ordinal suffix not be appended when the month comes first). Please see if you agree with how it is now. :) Sinuhe 08:48, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Yep, that looks good now, Sinuhe. Cheers. -- Derek Ross 21:02, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dates 

message: When spelling out an integer number in print or saying it out loud, using the word "and" within the number is technically wrong. Denelson83 10:02, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: No, it is not wrong at all. What you mean by 'technically', however, eludes me. Certainly this is not a page where any technical usage might be advocated, but rather one where common English regardless of context is described. It is true that Americans tend not to use the 'and', so perhaps this is what you meant. I have added a note linking the appropriate section at American and British English differences. Sinuhe 10:39, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: As I see it, the use of "and" within a number is really universally incorrect.  You'd never say "ninety and nine", would you? Denelson83 22:37, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: No, I would not: but ninety is not a hundred. One cannot place the 'and' just anywhere: it stands ONLY after the hundreds if there is indeed anything after that. Thus: ninety-nine (99), one hundred (100), one hundred AND one (101), ten thosand and one (10001), ten thousand and ninety-nine (10099), ten thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine (10999). Of course this is perhaps somewhat more adhered to in British English than in American, but most certainly it is correct. Have you ever seen an authoritative source claim it wrong? Sinuhe 13:38, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Although I also remember learning that "and" should never be used when speaking a number in American English, this page at mathworld seems to suggest that both are acceptable.  I would like a better reference source to really nail this down, though.  Perhaps a good dictionary would provide a general rule?  --Andrew L 16:51, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

text: 'Technically' correct as opposed to commonly used.  "Two thousand and five" is comman as is "I saw two cow's" but neither one is correct, in American usage.  The next time I'm around a manual I'll find a source (or two) to cite.  SpacemanSpork 22:49, 2005 Feb 22 (UTC)
To ad my 2 bits worth (or should I write two bits worth?), I don't recall much from my youth about this issue, except perhaps I might vaguely recall the use of "and" in expressions like "one hundred and one". I might ad that I am American and was in grade school during the 1950's. In the 1990s thru 2004 I had a second career as a math teacher, and became aware that some math curricula stress the idea of using "and" only to vocalize the decimal point so 101 is vocalized (or written in words) as "one hundred one" while 1.01 would become "one and one one hundredth". When this stress on this usage arose, I can't say, but I would guess that the reasoning is a desire for precision and a one-to-one correspondence between vocalization and writing in numerals.
All that being said, it is certainly true that general usage in America is much looser. You might hear "one hundred one", "a hundred one" or even "hundred one", while almost exclusively the colloquial usage is to use the word "point" to signify a decimal point, with the individual digits coming after it named: 1.01 would be spoken "one point zero one" or "one point oh one". Wschart (talk) 18:29, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

text: I am American, and I also remember being told not to say "a hundred and one" in elementary school, but this went against my natural instinct. I suppose that this is a rule that has emerged in the U.S. but not in Britain. I would be willing to bet that a lot of Americans still use "and" in this case. Lesgles 14:34, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)
What I learned 30 years ago in American English was you ONLY use the word "and" when saying 101 "one hundred and one", 201 "two hundred and one" and all other -01 numbers (301,...1001, 1101, etc.), but then drop the "and" unless referencing decimals.  Two hundred twelve, one hundred fifty, one thousand three hundred twenty two, etc. Effnyc 11:57, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

text: I was taught in primary school in Australian English that you put an AND after where the hundreds would be (regardless of if the hundreds exist), so like what Sinhue said before. You say six hundred million and four for 600 000 004. Thus, hundred x means hundred times x, but hundred and x means hundred plus x. Colloquially, if there's hundreds then tens, some people might sometimes drop the 'and' (so occasionally you hear two hundred twenty, but that's rare and considered (hereabouts) "wrong" as far as you could all any "and" usage, and if there's any more distance, the and is always there from what I can tell. Obviously just a case of Americans differing from the rest of us. What do they do in Canada, can anyone say? —Felix the Cassowary (ɑe hɪː jɐ) 14:24, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "And" 

message: I, nor any american sportscaster i've heard on radio or TV, have never used "nil" to mean a score of zero... it's always been "none", or "nothing". --Random|832 03:15, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it may be a Britishism. Can anyone from other English-speaking countries comment--130.164.68.211 18:26, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

text: To add to the debate late: in Australia "Nil" is commonly used. (Also, FWIW, "sport" is more commonly used that "sports"). Cheers, --Daveb 07:20, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nil 

message: What about expressing numbers such as 2500 as "twenty-five hundred".  I would think it is more common in American usage than saying "two thousand five hundred".  It does convey a sense of approximation, though -- I might also read 2493 as "twenty-five hundred" in an informal context.
:Seconded. In America at least, "fifteen hundred" is at least as common as "one thousand five hundred" though it sounds informal. This definitely deserves a mention, but hopefully someone with a better sense of this article's history and direction will do it. 130.94.161.238 09:46, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  hundreds over nine 

message: My mathematics professors (in the US) tend to use nought for subscripts such as x0 ("eks nought").
:You incorrectly closed out the sub tag (instead of closing one you opened a second one). It was messing up the rest of the page so I fixed it for you. --Bobby D. DS. 20:36, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nought in mathematics 

message: The article says that numbers greater than 1,000,000 are "seldom named" specifically. Any sources? This seems like a silly generalization and not at all encyclopedic. Problematic. Should be removed.Dave 00:00, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It said that those numbers were seldomly used. I've removed that. Voortle 20:21, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Numbers greater than 1 million

message: The use of superscripts in ordinal numbers has never been particularly common in English up to the annoying feature of Microsoft Word. So I corrected them all. 68.6.85.167 01:22, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Superscripts

message: This article generally does not cite sources. Its contributors wrote the article based on what they have heard; however, this does not accurately reflect English usage everywhere. Thus, we should cite an actual analysis of usage frequencies.
In particular, my dialect of English differs from the usage presented in the article:
* "1/4 	one-quarter (British) or one-fourth (American)" (and 3/4) I have heard "quarter" frequently used in the USA also.
* The Ordinal section asserts that "and" between hundreds and tens is nonstandard and rare. In my experience, this "and" is common, and omitting it seems strained.
Those from other regions, please comment; comparison of usages is essential for this article. Pcu123456789 06:17, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unverified assertions 

message: The page uses the example: 
  "There are six million dogs." (Preferred)
I'm curious as to why "six million dogs" is not better as "six-million dogs", given the use of "six million" as a compound adjective. (I guess this is not really a question about punctuating numbers, but rather about the interplay between punctuating numbers and punctuating compound adjectives.) Lee Feigenbaum 18:09, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hyphens in spelled-out numbers 

message: Or else, so are dozens of other mathematical, chemical, and physical constants that can fit in there. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 88.155.202.20 (talk) 20:42, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Avogadro's number is not for the "special names" section. 

message: The "Common British vernacular" column appears twice in one of the tables in the middle, not sure why this is. --Hooperbloob 12:29, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This is because the vernacular used changes depending on the context (quantifing marbles vs pronouncing bus no.). --Meridius (talk) 10:50, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Common British vernacular

message: There are two statements in the Dates section which appear to contradict each other:
* “To read dates in ordinal fashion is considered archaic.”
* “In British...English,... the ordinal suffix is always vocalised and often appended: "the 1st of October 1984".”
In my experience, having been a Briton for twenty-six years, the latter is correct. So, it would be nice if the editor who added the former to clarify what precisely she/he means, and differentiate it from the second.
Yet again we have the distinction between spoken and written English - definitely ordinal for spoken but not for written - normally as I'm sure there are exceptions! DickyP (talk) 08:20, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: These two do contradict each other yes. However, for the first one the rest of the paragraph is mainly about years not being given in ordinal fashion (for instance it's way more common to see/hear "two thousand and eight" not that it's the "two thousand and eighth year" although correct. The statement you quoted first is wrong because it says dates not years. Dates of the month are (especially in Britain) overall given ordinally. Sometimes the months themselves but less common. I'm deleting the first statement and should be removing the contradiction label. Deamon138 (talk) 04:21, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contradiction 

message: Come on! Spelling prescriptions? Dubious geographic differences in naming? Unreferenced discussion of copyedititors' preferences in style? I'm so giving this article a massive overhaul... 131.193.237.19 (talk) 15:04, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  This article marked for mass editing 

message: "There are six million dogs." (Preferred)
"There are 6,000,000 dogs."
"That is one hundred twenty-five oranges."
"That is 125 oranges." (Preferred)
Six million dogs?
One hundred and twenty-five oranges?
That's a bit excessive.
Lunakeet 15:46, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Strange examples... 

message: :Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *Support or *Oppose, then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.
*Oppose these should be separate proposals, this grouping is bad. 70.55.85.143 (talk) 06:58, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: *Just checked "numeral" at Wiktionary and found I was wrong - a "numeral" is "a word or symbol representing a number". So "15",  "fifteen" and "pymtheg" (Welsh) are all numerals. Therefore all of these articles are correctly named, and changing them to "Numbers in x" is definitely incorrect. As a matter of taste, I prefer "numerals" to the alternative construction "number names". Gandalf61 (talk) 14:36, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: * Comment: I agree; I think the title of that article should become English numerals to match the others. CRGreathouse (t | c) 20:00, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: * I think i am gonna move this article to English numerals when this discussion is closed. --Voidvector (talk) 06:47, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Survey

message: When writing out numbers in English, what is used to separate groups of thousands? I've most commonly seen the comma (,); for example, from what I've been taught, the number "123 456 789" would typically be written as "one hundred twenty-three million, four hundred fifty-six thousand, seven hundred eighty-nine" (note the two commas). But I've also seen the commas omitted for some numbers. I wish that the page had a section talking about this issue somewhere, as I'm sure there is some variation across different countries and usages. --128.97.245.68 (talk) 01:25, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thousands separator in words 

message: I think it is fair to say that use of the long scale and milliards has been entirely deprecated in the English language, and the SI use of billion is now the definitive usage. I'm uncertain that it will ever be possible to have a citation for this, but alteration to the article to update this seems necessary. Dutpar (talk) 14:53, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Long scale 

message: Ive created a series of templates of which the top level are Template:Cardinal to word and Template:Ordinal to word which convert numbers in the range -999,999 to +999,999 to English words. I could go farther than this relatively easily, but this I think will be enough for now.
I doubt these are of much use in articles as such (easier just to write the number out in the article), but may be of use for constructors of other templates, where numbers are passed in. Si Trew (talk) 10:40, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  New templates, more for fun than use, but let you know 

message: It has not been my experience that "Two thousand and ten" is the most common way of pronouncing this year, and we cannot say what the most common way of pronouncing future years will be.  I'm removing the current and future years section; 2010 can be added back in Jan. 1 2011. Zelmerszoetrop (talk) 22:25, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: For the record, nobody said that "Two thousand and ten" is the most common way of pronouncing this year. Why did you remove the only reliable source that was cited in the article (Oxford)? 62.123.12.8 (talk) 12:01, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dates (Again) 

message: In doing a search of the web for these supposed English words, the only site that I found was "Conrad's" web site [http://cgatordev.blogspot.com/2009/07/inheritance-in-human-and-software.html http://cgatordev.blogspot.com/2009/07/inheritance-in-human-and-software.html}. Several of the words seem rather suspect to me. But this does look like a good-faith effort (and quite a bit of work), I didn't treat it roughly, but unless someone can come up with some justification for it, it should be eventually deleted. TomS TDotO (talk) 10:35, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adjective numbers 

message: I have added the appropriate numbers commonly used especially for musical ensembles for numbers between 2 (duo) and 10 (decet). these numbers have been used for other groupings (example: Batman and his sidekick Robin form the "Dynamic Duo" in some widely-exposed pop literature and film). To be sure, the numbers in classical music refer not only to the ensembles that play certain sorts of music (as in a string quartet) but also the music written for such ensembles.  But even in the use of numbers they are used outside of classical music to describe some musical groups (the Kingston Trio  and barbershop quartets) that do not perform classical music. Piano trios and string quartets are perhaps the best known of permanent classical chamber ensembles, but as a rule the numbers apply to well-known works of music from duos to nonets. Decets are rare, but who knows what sort of music is possible? Names for ensembles larger than ten are clumsy and unlikely to be put to use except perhaps "dozen".Pbrower2a (talk) 14:24, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Specialized numbers 

message: This is a common case because the denominator of wrench measurements are powers of two. 188.103.56.225 (talk) 13:19, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nine thirty-seconds or nine thirty-secondths? 

message: The current revision of this article has hyphens between the numerator and demoninator in every case except for one half. I'm curious as to why. By the way, I read a style guide that says to omit the hyphen if either the numerator or denominator contain a hyphen. For example, three twenty-fifths as opposed to three-twenty-fifths. 188.103.56.225 (talk) 13:21, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  One-half or one half? 

message: Shouldn't there be mention of double, triple, and so on? TomS TDotO (talk) 11:11, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  double 

message: The recent move from English numerals to English numbers is well intentioned but unsure about it, if we look at the definition from Numeral (linguistics)
:In linguistics, number names (or numerals) are specific words in a natural language that represent numbers.
so by that definition the previous name was correct. The new name has problems - the french use the same numbers as the English, they just call then different things.--Salix (talk): 00:54, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent move 

message: ...is covered where?--Pawyilee (talk) 14:46, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Generational titles --Pawyilee (talk) 11:02, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ordinal numbering of reigns, royals and non-royal kin with the same name 

message: Should a reference to variations be added?  E.g., primary, secondary, and tertiary?  allixpeeke (talk) 18:42, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ordinal numbers 

message: Twenty-twenty redirects here, 20/20 to visual acuity. Wiktionary (via which I arrived here) does know the spelled-out variants, so I expected at least a disambig that would lead me to visual acuity. -- 212.9.60.124 (talk) 17:22, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Twenty-twenty vs. 20/20 

message: Shock was one of a number of items listed in UK and US counting units, sourced largely to a book by Cardarelli about which numerous editors have doubts.  That article was deleted at AfD, but I verifed  shock in the OED and added it to this article (along with hat-trick and decade, which already have articles, but leaving aside flock which was not in OED) and to the dab page at Shock. It has now been deleted as "too rare usage". I still think  that it's worth including. Rather than edit-warring, I invite other editors to comment.  PamD 08:55, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: The OED documents usage, not necessary common usage.  As I don't have a copy of the OED, I can't tell whether it says "archaic", or "archaic and rare" (implying it was rare even when it was used).  "Score" is fairly common, as was (apparently, at least in Old English and Middle German) "hundred" for 120.  (There is an editor trying to get "hundred" or "long hundred" into  and "thousand" into , or references to the number in the Wikipedia article on the name.)  — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 18:21, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: OED gives "Comm. Now hist." for "shock" meaning sixty, not giving "rare". I have to wonder if many of these count as "common" in the first place: I've never heard "banker's dozen" for eleven, but it appears in Wiktionary and is certainly amusing. So I think shock should be fine to put back in, though with a note saying "archaic". Double sharp (talk) 14:53, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, I've added back shock for sixty, along with its citation. I'm not so sure about the note saying "archaic", though: great hundred is certainly pretty archaic too, but it's not listed as such, and neither are many of the entries for the small numbers... Double sharp (talk) 15:21, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

text: Great apart from the fact that Shock according to the OED is is either 12 or 60! DickyP (talk) 07:50, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll take your word for the OED listing.  There are a few editors (most indefinitely blocked) who have been shown to have been incorrect in quoting sources, but you are not among them.  — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 21:33, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Here's a link to the OED entry, if you wanted it. ;-) Double sharp (talk) 09:25, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shock 

message: There are Italian words for the fifth and sixth from the last wikt:quintultimo and wikt:sestultimo - the dictionary entry for sestultimo cites a supposed English sestultimate. Are there real English words for before the preantepenultimate?    TomS TDotO (talk) 17:18, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Preantepenultimate ... 

message: I made a wiki link to wikt:banker's dozen but I realize that this is not an independent source. There are lots of references turned up by Google, but what counts as a reliable source?
urbandictionary.com?     TomS TDotO (talk) 19:59, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I came across an entry on Farlex, but it seems that Farlex may be using Wikipedia as a source, so that cannot be assured to be an independent source. TomS TDotO (talk) 23:44, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  banker's dozen 

message: There doesn't seem to be a unified linking scheme in the English numerals#Ordinal numbers sub-section, with some linking to the wikipedia number article, others linking to the wiktionary article (1, 5, 7, 8), others leading to even different pages (10 and 12), others missing links (14, 18, 19) and others with bad links (13). Not sure how to fix this as I have no idea which one of the linking schemes was the correct one. --Gonnym (talk) 11:53, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problem with linking scheme in the Ordinal numbers sub-section 

message: Would it be worth it to put in the old way of counting sheep, knitting stitches, (etc.) done in Northern England? See the article yan tan tethera for instance. 
Ll1324 (talk) 00:43, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yan Tan Tethera 

message: Isn't a million million the same in both scales? why not add it to both then?--Backinstadiums (talk) 10:10, 17 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  "million million" in the short scale 

message: An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect :Twenty thirty and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 February 22#Twenty thirty until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion.  TartarTorte 20:25, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Twenty thirty" listed at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion|Redirects for discussion]]