actually newspapers follow the practice of using numerals for numbers less than ten as recommended by the associated press style guide in the us to save space the chicago manual of style recommends using words for numbers up to one hundred several other sites suggest that numerals should not be used whenever the number can be written out in words obviously this would mean that numerals should not be used up to one hundred and also for other numbers such as three hundred or ten million see numbers in writing gude to punctuation univ of sussex aug utc