Counting in English

Language overview

West Germanic language of the Indo-European family, English is the official language of 53 countries, of which the USA, Great-Britain, Australia and Canada. It counts about 400 million speakers as first language.

English numbering rules

Now that you’ve had a gist of the most useful numbers, let’s move to the writing rules for the tens, the compound numbers, and why not the hundreds, the thousands and beyond (if possible).

• Digits from zero to nine are specific words, as well as numbers from ten to twelve, namely zero [0], one [1], two [2], three [3], four [4], five [5], six [6], seven [7], eight [8], nine [9], ten [10], eleven [11], and twelve [12].
• From thirteen to nineteen, the numbers are formed from the digits three to nine, adding the -teen suffix at the end: thirteen [13], fourteen [14], fifteen [15], sixteen [16], seventeen [17], eighteen [18], and nineteen [19].
• The tens are formed by adding the -(t)y suffix at the end of the multiplier digit root, with the exception of ten: ten [10], twenty [20], thirty [30], forty [40] (and not fourty), fifty [50], sixty [60], seventy [70], eighty [80], and ninety [90].
• From twenty-one to ninety-nine, the tens and units are joined with a hyphen.
• All the three-digit numbers are constructed by stating the hundreds, then adding the and word, then the tens and the digits (e.g.: two hundred and sixty-five [265]). Using the coordination and is a matter of choice, as whereas some writers prefer using it, The Chicago Manual of Style’s preference is to omit it.
• Hundred (100), thousand (1,000) and million (1,000,000) are always singular (e.g.: six hundred and thirty-five [635]).
• When directly added to hundred and thousand, the and word is added before tens and units (e.g.: seven hundred and three [703], or five thousand and two [5,002]).

Write a number in full in English

Let’s move now to the practice of the numbering rules in English. Will you guess how to write a number in full? Enter a number and try to write it down in your head, or maybe on a piece of paper, before displaying the result.

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