ABSTRACT
This chapter provides advice, with examples, on writing about numbers in the biomedical literature. It discusses the allocation of numbers, provides advice on issues that arise more often in the text, presents a few suggestions about numbers in tables, and deals with some remarks about symbols. Some journals and other sources of advice to writers have a rule that numbers smaller than 10 should be written out in words and larger ones should be given in Arabic numerals. Although scientific journals encourage precise writing, numbers with many distinct digits can lose readers in details when what may be needed primarily is a grasp of the magnitude. Although some manuals of style go into detail about handling numbers in the text, the rules have many exceptions. Some manuals are oriented more toward the humanities or journalistic writing than toward scientific or technical writing.
