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I was lurking the feedback forum and saw something fairly minute but important brought up as feedback by the user zeryn.
I think everyone has some kind of petty writing rule that they particularly latch on to and for whatever reason end up bothered by when it's broken, and the "correct" method of how to write numbers is a very petty writing rule that hits up that point for me. Beginning a sentence with "and"? I don't care, go for it. But the rules of words vs. numbers is one that always gets to me. But it's also much less known than I thought it was, apparently, as I see this brought up sometimes.
So here is a short style guide as to how to write numbers.
Now, depending on the medium the rules vary, and beyond that there are always exceptions to the rule. So there is literally no ultimately "correct" way, and if there are points in this style guide you feel are "incorrect", they may indeed be incorrect to you, but it doesn't make them objectively incorrect. Feel free to add your own points as to how you have been taught, but please don't go around blanket stating "what you said is wrong". Unfortunately, the written word is inconsistent.
When talking about prose or literature (so not something like a business report, design document, etc. but purely, within the context of ScribbleHub, prose), the style guide is usually:
A style guide is just that: a guide.
One thing I see from the start, is using "2". It's probably just a pet peeve but in general numbers below 10 should be spelled out. Of course that can be different for everyone...
I think everyone has some kind of petty writing rule that they particularly latch on to and for whatever reason end up bothered by when it's broken, and the "correct" method of how to write numbers is a very petty writing rule that hits up that point for me. Beginning a sentence with "and"? I don't care, go for it. But the rules of words vs. numbers is one that always gets to me. But it's also much less known than I thought it was, apparently, as I see this brought up sometimes.
So here is a short style guide as to how to write numbers.
Now, depending on the medium the rules vary, and beyond that there are always exceptions to the rule. So there is literally no ultimately "correct" way, and if there are points in this style guide you feel are "incorrect", they may indeed be incorrect to you, but it doesn't make them objectively incorrect. Feel free to add your own points as to how you have been taught, but please don't go around blanket stating "what you said is wrong". Unfortunately, the written word is inconsistent.
When talking about prose or literature (so not something like a business report, design document, etc. but purely, within the context of ScribbleHub, prose), the style guide is usually:
- First, and this is the most important: numbers in dialogue should always be written out. Excepting instances where it becomes too visually confusing if you're dealing with a lot of numbers, or some of the other exceptions to rules listed out below, spoken character dialogue should always have written out numbers, no matter the value. The reason is simple: numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, et al) are symbols that represent a numeric value, the names of numbers (one, two, three, four, et al) is the language. We cannot vocalise "1" as a symbol, but we cannot vocalise "one" as a word referring to the symbol. Again, there are always going to be exceptions to the rule, but please, try to remember then when you're writing dialogue, you're writing the characters' speech. The same way you would write "aaaah!" instead of "scream!", you write "one" instead of "1" for dialogue. Okay, moving on to some of the more generalised rules of writing number names vs numeric values.
- Single digit numbers (1-9) in writing should always be spelled out, barring very specific circumstances (eg. if you're talking about computer binary language in the story, writing 1 and 0 instead of one and zero is understandable as the numeric value itself is the language, not the word. Another exception will be brought up in point five).
- Double digit numbers (11-99) in writing are usually spelled out too, but can sometimes be written in numbers. In other words, it's traditional to spell any number that can be expressed as two words (eg. twenty-nine), but you're not wrong for writing them as numbers.
- Numbers that are expressed above two words (triple digit and upwards numbers eg. one hundred and three) should be written as numbers, but can in certain circumstances be spelled out (see: point eight). This means that, yes, you can write one hundred or 100, since "one hundred" is a two word number.
- A rule which breaks the rule: when writing two related but separate numbers (kind of a confusing sentence but as example: two separate measurements i.e. 1m and 111m - with both representing a measurement of distance, but two separate measurements) within the same sentence, they need to be written consistently. That means if you have the example "one" and "111" in the same sentence, they both need to be written as either words or numbers. So the sentence should be something like "he moved from the one metre mark to the one hundred and eleven metre mark" or "he moved from the 1 metre mark to the 111 metre mark".
- When two numbers are in the same sentence but they are unrelated, you can write them differently. So in this case: the five of them moved from the 1 metre mark to the 111 metre mark. Note that the written five denotes the number of people, while the other numbers denote a measurement of distance, thus they're unrelated numbers. I know, it's a bitch.
- Two separate numbers next to each other should probably be written differently, mostly for the purpose of differentiation. "We have six 1-metre long planks of wood" vs. "we have six one metre long planks of wood". The second sentence is readable, but it may take you a second try to immediately make sense of it.
- Never start a sentence with a numeric number. This means if you have a sentence that starts with "1,503", you need to write out "One thousand, five hundred and three", or you need to change the sentence structure in order to place the number later in the sentence: "One thousand, five hundred and three people gathered together" vs. "A gathering of 1,503 people".
A style guide is just that: a guide.
You kinda already explained this but:
Another exception is if you want to show a visual, like if your character would read a digital clock: 1:35. (Because technically they are reading it that way, and not spelled out, ya know ^^
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