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”).

  • Eiri@lemmy.caEnglish
    722·
    2 months ago

    What kills me is when people will mix the two in a single context.

    “Between eight and 13 percent”

    NO. If you’re writing one number in digits, you need to write them all the same way.

    • KoalaUnknown@lemmy.worldEnglish
      363·
      2 months ago

      Sometimes it’s actually better to mix them.

      Example from Purdue Owl:

      Unclear: The club celebrated the birthdays of 6 90-year-olds who were born in the city.

      Clearer: The club celebrated the birthdays of six 90-year-olds who were born in the city.

    • mosiacmango@lemm.eeEnglish
      9·
      2 months ago

      This kills me, but its not as bad as the habit of new articles/print authors to switch between first and last names of the same person within a few sentences.

      They will introduce Jeff Snoms, and then refer to them has “Jeff” and “Snoms” interchangeably for no discernable reason. It gets really maddening when they are doing it with 3 or 4 people, so suddenly the story has 2x as many characters involved.

      • i_love_FFT@lemmy.mlEnglish
        7·
        2 months ago

        Wait till you read russian novels, where everyone’s got 3 names and 2 official nickname everyone is expected to know…

    • Rhaedas@fedia.io
      1·
      2 months ago

      This is how I approach it. If there’s only a few numbers mentioned and they’re small, write them out. If there’s many numbers mentioned, then they should all be numbers. And I catch myself messing it up all the time and going back to edit the one number I put in there because it just looks wrong. Context is everything, really.

    • subtext@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      2 months 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.eeEnglish
        3·
        2 months 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)