Numbers, when do you spell them out.

[MillieDynamite]

I think it's a matter of choice. When writing in Victorian style, it reads, In the year of our lord, eighteen hundred and seventy-nine, as opposed to 1879, which is pronounced eighteen seventy-nine. Like I said, I prefer the sound of it. Any number starting a sentence would be written out in text rather than numbers. It's a rule, pesky as it may be.

Except when it's a year, surely? 1879 immediately designates a year in most publications, does it not? 1,879 is the number, and I'd always use numerals for anything over a hundred, unless it was a round thousand, ten-thousand etc.

 

[Yarglenurp]

As a reader first and writer second, I like to think that any number greater than three should be a number. Because we are trained with numbers in our daily lives, 8 apples is easier to visualize than eight apples.

 

[MillieDynamite]

The rule is 0 - 9 is written out unless you have two, such as 1 through 10 should be one through ten. 11 and up is numeric, where over 10,000 to whatever is the writer's choice. Nine or Ten is correct, and 10 or 11 is correct. But nine or 10 is incorrect. At least that's why they told me!

 

[Yarglenurp]

Yeah, I heard the rule too. But I think that these rules are more just guidelines once you're out of school. Not like anyone here is docking points for this stuff anymore.

As far as I'm concerned, unless Mrs. Habler is coming back from the dead to redline my submissions, correctness is more about increasing ease of comprehension than adhering to rules.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Too many grammatical violations in the body of your story, which are outside of a dialog, will get the story sent back here. So, it does matter a wee bit. There are stylistic reasons to write a certain way, but you can't just willy-nilly ignore rules.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

I usually write them out.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Too many grammatical violations in the body of your story, which are outside of a dialog, will get the story sent back here. So, it does matter a wee bit. There are stylistic reasons to write a certain way, but you can't just willy-nilly ignore rules.

Never heard of a rejection for spelling out/not spelling out numbers though.

Consistency of style often trumps other considerations. Even if the style manual says to spell out numbers up to ten, it'd look weird to write a countdown as "Twelve, eleven, 10, 9, 8, ..."

 

[TheLobster]

I'm of similar mind to @StillStunned here, usually spelling out numbers in full. I haven't yet had a case where an exact value of something like 57219 was important, so I could always get away with just the equivalent of "fifty thousand".

There are exceptions, of course, and they include:

• Years, obviously.
• People's heights, like 5'9". Mostly because for the life of me I cannot figure out how to punctuate the spelled out version. I think it's something like "She was five-foot nine." but also "He was taller than her five-foot-nine" (notice the extra dash). Makes me wanna switch to metric sometimes...
• Weight, not just people (haven't actually done that yet) but also inanimate objects where it matters (parts of my Yay Team story are set in a gym, with all that implies)
• "Science-y stuff." Happened with my Geek Pride submission, where I thought 0.55, 0.82 and even 80% simply look better in context as digits.

All in all, I generally go with what looks and reads better to me. Or just try to avoid numbers altogether, which I do for breast sizes

 

[enbiji]

I'm of similar mind to @StillStunned here, usually spelling out numbers in full. I haven't yet had a case where an exact value of something like 57219 was important, so I could always get away with just the equivalent of "fifty thousand".

There are exceptions, of course, and they include:

• Years, obviously.
• People's heights, like 5'9". Mostly because for the life of me I cannot figure out how to punctuate the spelled out version. I think it's something like "She was five-foot nine." but also "He was taller than her five-foot-nine" (notice the extra dash). Makes me wanna switch to metric sometimes...
• Weight, not just people (haven't actually done that yet) but also inanimate objects where it matters (parts of my Yay Team story are set in a gym, with all that implies)
• "Science-y stuff." Happened with my Geek Pride submission, where I thought 0.55, 0.82 and even 80% simply look better in context as digits.

All in all, I generally go with what looks and reads better to me. Or just try to avoid numbers altogether, which I do for breast sizes

Shakes my thirty-four dees

 

[StillStunned]

All in all, I generally go with what looks and reads better to me. Or just try to avoid numbers altogether, which I do for breast sizes

The usual number when referring to breasts is "two". (Well, except for cat-women.)

 

[enbiji]

The usual number when referring to breasts is "two". (Well, except for cat-women.)

Udderly ridiculous.

 

[mildlyaroused]

I just looked. In my entire latest manuscript (350 pages), I haven't used a single numeric digit (0-9), other than to number chapters. That probably says more about my way of description than it does my way of writing out numbers when they crop up. YMMV.

 

[TheLobster]

Shakes my thirty-four dees

thirty-four deez nuts

 

[StillStunned]

Rules for using digits? Give them the finger!

 

[nice90sguy]

I use words for brevity. I prefer, for example to simply use "pi" rather than 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164...

 

[TheLobster]

I actually have π and φ in my Geek Pride story. I really hope they're gonna render properly...