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Literally Nineteen Eighty-Four (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 month ago by MisterFrog@lemmy.world to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/21049862

The only numbers I will ever spell are one and zero, and only when using them as a pronoun, or for emphasis, respectively.

Is there ever a reason to not to use symbols when dealing with numbers? Why would "fourteen whatevers" ever be preferable to "14 whatevers". It's just so much easier to read numbers as symbols, not spelled out.

(Caveat, not including multipliers, like "273 billion").

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[-] subtext@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

In general, use numerals to express numbers 10 and above, and use words to express numbers zero through nine.

Example given:

students were in the third, sixth, eighth, 10th, and 12th grades

Your example does not follow the style guide and is an example of when to use digits

Percentages 50% 75%–80%

If you’re a professional writer, you should be following the style guide and this is explicitly spelled out by the APA.

https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/numbers/numerals

[-] barsoap@lemm.ee 3 points 1 month ago

The German standard is to write out everything up to 12 and as English also doesn't say one-teen and two-teen that's how I always did it. (why not tenty-one btw? be consistent your numbers are all weird)