...my daughter texted today. "I'm writing a 7 page paper."
As a former columnist with an exacting editor, I replied:
One through nine are spelled out. Always spell out numbers when they are the first word in a sentence:
Forty-one people farted in unison.
Zero people attended.
Also, 10 and up are witten in digits:
At the party, 20 people jumped into the pool.
Okay. Maybe useful for current students. Not useful for me anymore. heh
Do you have a recording of number 1 example??
Lol
I spell out smaller numbers online cause it's easier then going to other menus to use numbers.. Anything higher than the ten.. Unsure..
Boring sentence:
"One thousand, seven hundred and seventy-six was the year the United States of America was established."
Better: "In 1776, America was founded."
From Strunk and Whiteβs *Elements of Style: Omit needless words.
I've heard that Canadians, Mexicans, Central and South Americans feel it's haughty for those of us in the USA to refer to our nation as America--since they are Americans too.
Is that Jed Strunk? No, he was "A Daisy A Day."
@Wallace That is not a Canadian sentiment at all. But I hear or read it often from south and central americans that consider the two continents as the Americas. I find it strange as well.
Youβre correct ... spell out numbers below 10 and any number starting a sentence. Also, she would hyphenate βseven-page paper.β (My degree is in English and I work as a writer/editor.)
PS - The rules are much relaxed when texting.
When are we ever going to use this? I don't even know 41 flatulent people let alone any that talented.
I included humor to amuse my daughter. It was fun writing.
I have to write reports and I use it all the bloody time. Although I follow literate's rules generally, I change the format to whatever is easiest to read or allows the sentence to flow best. Or change my sentence structure so that it doesn't look "clunky".
Yet when you write a number in this group it always underlines it like you did a bad thing! 13
I didn't know that because I write numbers correctly. It's a habit.
@LiterateHiker Yep, knew my laziness would keep me in trouble!
Now I know where to go if I have a grammar question. Do you have a fee?
Ask away. No charge.
@LiterateHiker I was taught in school that βloanβ is ALWAYS a noun and that the the verb is βlendβ. Yet I constantly see it the other way, even in high-class publications. βSetβ and βlayβ are constantly used in ways that would have made my high school English teacher scream. Am I off base here?
Iβm going to lie lowly until I hear back.
Agreed. Grammar and spelling mistakes make people seem dumb and careless.
@WilliamFleming "...lie lowly..." Haha! I guess speaking correctly can be fun. Who was it (Churchill?) who said "Ending sentences with prepositions is something up with which I shall no longer put"?
Thank you I did not know that. Were those 41 people in a church?
That would explain why I haven't met them.