Numbers

The use of commas and full stops in numbers is one of the items dealt with in this chapter. What, for example, do the following headlines tell you about the use of the comma and the full stop?

Britain takes in 1,200 refugees

House prices climb 2.5 % in a month

1 Spelling https://www.niso.org/standards/z39-96/ns/oasis-exchange/table"> fourteen thousand (ou!) forty (o!) two hundred (2 separate words) fifteen (f!) ten thousand (2 separate words) eighteen (one t!) million (double 1) twenty-two (hyphen!) billion (double 1)

Note the spelling of fourteen, forty, fi fteen and eighteen.

A hyphen (-) is used between tens and units: for example, twenty-one, twenty-two etc.

Two hundred, ten thousand etc. are written as two separate words.

Coca Cola to invest two billion dollars in China

2 A/one/and

(1) a/one hundred euros

(2) a/one thousand people

(3) two hundred and fi fty

(4) two thousand and nine

(5) three thousand nine hundred

Hundred, thousand, million, billion are preceded by a or one. (1–2) (A billion is 1,000,000,000).

After hundred and thousand, the word and is used before tens and units (3–4), but ‘and’ is not used between thousands and hundreds. (5)

For numbers between 1,100 and 1,900 it is common to say eleven hundred, twelve hundred instead of one thousand one hundred etc.

3 Use of comma and full stop in numbers https://www.niso.org/standards/z39-96/ns/oasis-exchange/table"> (1) 1,500/10,000/100,000 (4) 3.5 per cent/45.2 seconds

English uses a comma to separate thousands. (1) In other languages a full stop is often used.

English uses a full stop (pronounced as ‘point’) before decimals. (4) In other languages a comma is often used.