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Years after 2000 have no set system as of yet for expressing them.
What about "twenty oh-three"?
This is wikibooks: stuff. -- Menchi 02:01, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)
In England, many would say "nought point nought nought two", and likewise "nought" for any number zero.
Some recognition of the convention of saying "point nought two"/"point zero two" (i.e. dropping the number before the point - only done when it's a 0) might be made. I know it would confuse me if I'd never heard it. -- Suitov, 13:49, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)
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
Just a small note: perhaps a section could be added on centuries, i.e., nineteenth century vs. 19th century. Also, there seems to be a small (ahem!) bias towards British English. I would also like to suggest that different forms are used in different contexts. January 12th, 2006 might be used in a letter while 12 January 2006 in an academic paper. (Or is this just a reflection of my own confusion on the matter?)
No real confusion - just depends on usage (as usual). Since 1972 all government service organizations in UK have been supposed (though there is little evidence of compliance or even knowledge of the policy) to use dates in the format D MMMM YYYY or D MMM YYYY with either spaces or solidus '/' as separators, when dating a document, whilst other formats are acceptable when used in the flow of the the document's discussion. Similarly times are supposed to be in the format HH:MM (24 hr clock). As soon as I run the reference to earth I'll append it. DickyP ( talk) 08:30, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
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)
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)
What i learned in school was that the only acceptable use of "and" is to represent the decimal point... by the logic of the system i was taught, 3.14159 would be read as "three and fourteen thousand one hundred fifty-nine hundred-thousandths." However, this always struck me as an obviously prescriptivist rule. Sinuhe is correct as far as i can tell, except that i've always considered the "and"s optional. -- Random| 832 03:15, 16 Jun 2004 (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)
I was born and raised here in the U.S. and have lived on both coasts and in the middle, and I have never heard of any rule against using the "and." I think before 2000 I would have referred to this year as "two thousand six," but I think I say "two thousand and six" now. Until I encountered this article, I had the impression that this was the more correct usage. In other contexts I think I always use the "and:" for instance, being an amateur genealogist, I frequently talk about things that happened "a hundred and fifty years ago." (Of course, these numbers usually come out sounding more like "a-hundred-'n'-fifty.") -- Darrell M., 12.107.67.3 18:41, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
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)
I agree. I'm a USA native, and I also think 'nil' is never used for scores in USA, so I've updated the sports (not 'sport' here) examples. 21 Apr 2005
Very much an British English usage - I have rarely, if ever, heard a zeor score in Football, Rugby, Hockey etc referred to as anything other than 'nil'. In Cricket, however, a zero score by a batsman if often decribed as nought. DickyP ( talk) 10:38, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
Actually, I've heard American sportscasters use every name under the sun for blank scores: zero, zip, zilch, nil, nada, nothing, love (even outside of tennis), squat, jack, etc. (Oops, forgot to sign.) CaptHayfever 00:03, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
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.
My mathematics professors (in the US) tend to use nought for subscripts such as x0 ("eks nought").
I'm about to move this page to "Names of numbers in English". Does anyone object? [[User:Poccil| Peter O. ( Talk)]] 07:30, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)
What are the linguistic rules for coming up with such large numbers?
Million, billion, trillion, quadrillion, quintillion are fairly straight forward. But after that, what?
Sextillion or Hextillion? Which comes from which language, and which language is usually used? I'm assuming they derive from Greek, Latin or some other foreign language.
Septillion, Octillion, Nonillion, Decillion, then what?
Centillion (long scale, 1,000,000 to the power of 600; short scale, 1,000,000 to the power of 303)
Millillion (long scale, 1,000,000 to the power of 6000; short scale, 1,000,000 to the power of 3003)
What words and prefixes are used to assemble the names of such large numbers?
There's already an article which covers that sort of thing, as well as an article for each number, and each of those numbers only has one name – googol and googolplex, respectively. — Wiki Wikardo
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)
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)
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:
Those from other regions, please comment; comparison of usages is essential for this article. Pcu123456789 06:17, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
I concur with the above contributor's statement regarding the passage in the article that specifically says that most Americans are taught not to put an "and" between the hundreds and the tens. This assertion definitely needs to cite a reference for plausibility. As an American and as an ESL teacher who teaches with the "and" firmly in place, such contradictory comments need some vetting before I can trust them as a reference. Also, it has been two years and it appears that nobody has found better sources for the information. If I can find something more definitive to contribute as a reference, I'll be sure to post it here and see what everyone thinks. Midnightbrewer ( talk) 03:24, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
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)
For the same reason you don't say five-thirty PM. 83.70.247.123 04:41, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
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).
"Umpty" is not in common usage. It can appear in the form "umpty-one" (paralleling the usage in such numbers as "twenty-one"), as in "There are umpty-one ways to do it wrong."
I'd say it's not in any kind of use. Is there any reference to this usage which I've never heard of?
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)
The table is misleading because of the titles "American" and "British". The context of all three columns is different, and it is innacurate to say that one example is "American" while the other is "British". I suggest removing the titles "American" and "British" from the top row. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.91.105.168 ( talk) 04:31, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
There are two statements in the Dates section which appear to contradict each other:
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)
Thanks, Thebrid ( talk) 11:36, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
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)
"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.
Lu na ke et 15:46, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
They’re just that: examples, to illustrate a mostly theoretical point. In this context, it shouldn’t really matter whether they seem “realistic” or “strange” in a practical sense. It’s akin to those discussions that seem to crop up now & them about how years like 10xxx or even 100xxx should be pronounced - altogether disregarding the overwhelmingly likely possibility that the english language as we know it - perhaps even our society in general, or the human species itself - will no longer exist by the time those years come around (or even anywhere close to them.)
That said, you (and anyone else who shares your opinion on this) are free to replace them if you can come up with something you feel would be more appropriate to use as examples; I just personally don’t see the point. — Mojace ( talk) 17:31, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
The result of the proposal was no move. JPG-GR ( talk) 18:03, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
Names of numbers in English → Numbers in English — The following articles do not cover any pure numeral system where the symbols and notations are clearly defined, instead they cover how numbers are used in the respective languages. This distinct should be made, and they should all be renamed to a more consistent name. I propose they all be renamed "Numbers in ____". To make the distinction clearer, Roman numerals is a separate system of writing numbers distinct from Latin (Roman language). One is written as "I" in Roman numerals, while it is written as "unus" in Latin. — Voidvector ( talk) 11:16, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
*'''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.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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
The definition of naught/nought seems to be at odds with the Concise Oxford English Dictionary and the New Oxford American Dictionary which both show naught being used as an alternative in the US for zero, whereas in British English nought equates to zero and naught to nothing (which as we know is NOT the same as zero). DickyP ( talk) 16:11, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
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)
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)
Shouldn't there be mention of double, triple, and so on? TomS TDotO ( talk) 11:11, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
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)
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)
The result of the move request was: not moved, with no prejudice against a new RM discussing the merits of Salix's alternative titles. (non-admin closure) Jenks24 ( talk) 06:58, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
English numerals →
English numbers – Most of the article is not about English
numerals, but about other number words. —
kwami (
talk)
06:09, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
...is covered where?-- Pawyilee ( talk) 14:46, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Should a reference to variations be added? E.g., primary, secondary, and tertiary? allixpeeke ( talk) 18:42, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
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) Just to add the confusion - don't forget Twenty/20 as used in cricket! DickyP ( talk) 19:17, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
So disgusted by the use of "ten hundred" instead of one thousand. adopt the metric system already chums — Preceding unsigned comment added by 148.240.102.6 ( talk) 20:56, 24 September 2014 (UTC)
The reference to "metric system" in this discussion section is a total red-herring as the expression refers specifically to measurement systems based on the metre - and these theoretically don't even have to be based on decimal numbering, a preference for which is what I suspect was the point the user was trying to make! DickyP ( talk) 08:20, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
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. Pam D 08:55, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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.
Tartar
Torte
20:25, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
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Years after 2000 have no set system as of yet for expressing them.
What about "twenty oh-three"?
This is wikibooks: stuff. -- Menchi 02:01, 27 Nov 2003 (UTC)
In England, many would say "nought point nought nought two", and likewise "nought" for any number zero.
Some recognition of the convention of saying "point nought two"/"point zero two" (i.e. dropping the number before the point - only done when it's a 0) might be made. I know it would confuse me if I'd never heard it. -- Suitov, 13:49, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)
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
Just a small note: perhaps a section could be added on centuries, i.e., nineteenth century vs. 19th century. Also, there seems to be a small (ahem!) bias towards British English. I would also like to suggest that different forms are used in different contexts. January 12th, 2006 might be used in a letter while 12 January 2006 in an academic paper. (Or is this just a reflection of my own confusion on the matter?)
No real confusion - just depends on usage (as usual). Since 1972 all government service organizations in UK have been supposed (though there is little evidence of compliance or even knowledge of the policy) to use dates in the format D MMMM YYYY or D MMM YYYY with either spaces or solidus '/' as separators, when dating a document, whilst other formats are acceptable when used in the flow of the the document's discussion. Similarly times are supposed to be in the format HH:MM (24 hr clock). As soon as I run the reference to earth I'll append it. DickyP ( talk) 08:30, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
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)
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)
What i learned in school was that the only acceptable use of "and" is to represent the decimal point... by the logic of the system i was taught, 3.14159 would be read as "three and fourteen thousand one hundred fifty-nine hundred-thousandths." However, this always struck me as an obviously prescriptivist rule. Sinuhe is correct as far as i can tell, except that i've always considered the "and"s optional. -- Random| 832 03:15, 16 Jun 2004 (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)
I was born and raised here in the U.S. and have lived on both coasts and in the middle, and I have never heard of any rule against using the "and." I think before 2000 I would have referred to this year as "two thousand six," but I think I say "two thousand and six" now. Until I encountered this article, I had the impression that this was the more correct usage. In other contexts I think I always use the "and:" for instance, being an amateur genealogist, I frequently talk about things that happened "a hundred and fifty years ago." (Of course, these numbers usually come out sounding more like "a-hundred-'n'-fifty.") -- Darrell M., 12.107.67.3 18:41, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
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)
I agree. I'm a USA native, and I also think 'nil' is never used for scores in USA, so I've updated the sports (not 'sport' here) examples. 21 Apr 2005
Very much an British English usage - I have rarely, if ever, heard a zeor score in Football, Rugby, Hockey etc referred to as anything other than 'nil'. In Cricket, however, a zero score by a batsman if often decribed as nought. DickyP ( talk) 10:38, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
Actually, I've heard American sportscasters use every name under the sun for blank scores: zero, zip, zilch, nil, nada, nothing, love (even outside of tennis), squat, jack, etc. (Oops, forgot to sign.) CaptHayfever 00:03, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
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.
My mathematics professors (in the US) tend to use nought for subscripts such as x0 ("eks nought").
I'm about to move this page to "Names of numbers in English". Does anyone object? [[User:Poccil| Peter O. ( Talk)]] 07:30, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)
What are the linguistic rules for coming up with such large numbers?
Million, billion, trillion, quadrillion, quintillion are fairly straight forward. But after that, what?
Sextillion or Hextillion? Which comes from which language, and which language is usually used? I'm assuming they derive from Greek, Latin or some other foreign language.
Septillion, Octillion, Nonillion, Decillion, then what?
Centillion (long scale, 1,000,000 to the power of 600; short scale, 1,000,000 to the power of 303)
Millillion (long scale, 1,000,000 to the power of 6000; short scale, 1,000,000 to the power of 3003)
What words and prefixes are used to assemble the names of such large numbers?
There's already an article which covers that sort of thing, as well as an article for each number, and each of those numbers only has one name – googol and googolplex, respectively. — Wiki Wikardo
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)
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)
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:
Those from other regions, please comment; comparison of usages is essential for this article. Pcu123456789 06:17, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
I concur with the above contributor's statement regarding the passage in the article that specifically says that most Americans are taught not to put an "and" between the hundreds and the tens. This assertion definitely needs to cite a reference for plausibility. As an American and as an ESL teacher who teaches with the "and" firmly in place, such contradictory comments need some vetting before I can trust them as a reference. Also, it has been two years and it appears that nobody has found better sources for the information. If I can find something more definitive to contribute as a reference, I'll be sure to post it here and see what everyone thinks. Midnightbrewer ( talk) 03:24, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
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)
For the same reason you don't say five-thirty PM. 83.70.247.123 04:41, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
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).
"Umpty" is not in common usage. It can appear in the form "umpty-one" (paralleling the usage in such numbers as "twenty-one"), as in "There are umpty-one ways to do it wrong."
I'd say it's not in any kind of use. Is there any reference to this usage which I've never heard of?
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)
The table is misleading because of the titles "American" and "British". The context of all three columns is different, and it is innacurate to say that one example is "American" while the other is "British". I suggest removing the titles "American" and "British" from the top row. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.91.105.168 ( talk) 04:31, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
There are two statements in the Dates section which appear to contradict each other:
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)
Thanks, Thebrid ( talk) 11:36, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
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)
"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.
Lu na ke et 15:46, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
They’re just that: examples, to illustrate a mostly theoretical point. In this context, it shouldn’t really matter whether they seem “realistic” or “strange” in a practical sense. It’s akin to those discussions that seem to crop up now & them about how years like 10xxx or even 100xxx should be pronounced - altogether disregarding the overwhelmingly likely possibility that the english language as we know it - perhaps even our society in general, or the human species itself - will no longer exist by the time those years come around (or even anywhere close to them.)
That said, you (and anyone else who shares your opinion on this) are free to replace them if you can come up with something you feel would be more appropriate to use as examples; I just personally don’t see the point. — Mojace ( talk) 17:31, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
The result of the proposal was no move. JPG-GR ( talk) 18:03, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
Names of numbers in English → Numbers in English — The following articles do not cover any pure numeral system where the symbols and notations are clearly defined, instead they cover how numbers are used in the respective languages. This distinct should be made, and they should all be renamed to a more consistent name. I propose they all be renamed "Numbers in ____". To make the distinction clearer, Roman numerals is a separate system of writing numbers distinct from Latin (Roman language). One is written as "I" in Roman numerals, while it is written as "unus" in Latin. — Voidvector ( talk) 11:16, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
*'''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.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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
The definition of naught/nought seems to be at odds with the Concise Oxford English Dictionary and the New Oxford American Dictionary which both show naught being used as an alternative in the US for zero, whereas in British English nought equates to zero and naught to nothing (which as we know is NOT the same as zero). DickyP ( talk) 16:11, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
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)
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)
Shouldn't there be mention of double, triple, and so on? TomS TDotO ( talk) 11:11, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
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)
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)
The result of the move request was: not moved, with no prejudice against a new RM discussing the merits of Salix's alternative titles. (non-admin closure) Jenks24 ( talk) 06:58, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
English numerals →
English numbers – Most of the article is not about English
numerals, but about other number words. —
kwami (
talk)
06:09, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
...is covered where?-- Pawyilee ( talk) 14:46, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Should a reference to variations be added? E.g., primary, secondary, and tertiary? allixpeeke ( talk) 18:42, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
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) Just to add the confusion - don't forget Twenty/20 as used in cricket! DickyP ( talk) 19:17, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
So disgusted by the use of "ten hundred" instead of one thousand. adopt the metric system already chums — Preceding unsigned comment added by 148.240.102.6 ( talk) 20:56, 24 September 2014 (UTC)
The reference to "metric system" in this discussion section is a total red-herring as the expression refers specifically to measurement systems based on the metre - and these theoretically don't even have to be based on decimal numbering, a preference for which is what I suspect was the point the user was trying to make! DickyP ( talk) 08:20, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
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. Pam D 08:55, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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.
Tartar
Torte
20:25, 22 February 2022 (UTC)