Writing numbers correctly

It’s important to know when to write a number using the digits themselves, such as ‘49’, and when to write the number using actual words, such as ‘forty-nine’.

The rule I was always told was to write whole numbers up to ‘nine’ as words, and to write numbers 10 or larger using digits. This seemed to work pretty well for everything I wrote. So for instance:

I have already had two hamburgers today, that’s 80 grams of fat!

The number ‘two’ is smaller than 10, so we write it as a word. But the number 80 is larger than 10, so we write it using numbers.

This is only a general guideline, not a hard and fast rule. You can always write out a number using words, it’s not ‘incorrect’ to do so even for large numbers. A good thing to aim for is consistency within your writing - so if you choose to only write numbers larger than or equal to 10 using digits, make sure you do this throughout your writing.

Click here to move on to the next topic: Numbers of units