English cardinal numbers - you can see from the numbers in this table how to form all other numbers.
| Cardinal Numbers |
0 zero, oh, nought, nil, love, nothing
1 one
2 two
3 three
4 four
5 five
6 six
7 seven
8 eight
9 nine
10 ten
11 eleven
12 twelve
13 thirteen
14 fourteen
15 fifteen
16 sixteen
17 seventeen
18 eighteen
19 nineteen
20 twenty
21 twenty-one
22 twenty-two
23 twenty-three
24 twenty-four
25 twenty-five
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26 twenty-six
27 twenty-seven
28 twenty-eight
29 twenty-nine
30 thirty
40 forty (no "u")
50 fifty
60 sixty
70 seventy
80 eighty
90 ninety
100 a/one hundred
101 a hundred and one
110 a hundred and ten
120 a hundred and twenty
200 two hundred
1,000 a/one thousand
1,001 a thousand and one
1,010 a thousand and ten
2,000 two thousand
10,000 ten thousand
11,000 eleven thousand
100,000 a/one hundred thousand
1,000,000 a/one million
2,000,000 two million
1,000,000,000 a/one billion
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Note: In the past British speakers used "billion" to mean a million million. However, nowdays they usually use it to mean a thousand million (a milliard), like American speakers.
Expressing Numbers in English
:: If a number is in the range 21 to 99, and the second digit is not zero, we should write the number as two words separated by a hyphen:
25 twenty-five
57 fifty-seven
89 eighty-nine
:: Numbers over 100 are generally written in figures. However if you want to say them aloud or want to write them in words rather than figures you put 'and' in front of the number expressed by the last two figures. For example:
203 two hundred and three (AmE: two hundred three)
622 six hundred and twenty-two (AmE: six hundred twenty-two)
:: Numbers between 1000 and 1,000,000 is usually said or written in words as:
1,803 one thousand, eight hundred and three (AmE: one thousand, eight hundred three)
1,963 one thousand, nine hundred and sixty-three (AmE: one thousand, nine hundred sixty-three)
2,840 two thousand, eight hundred and forty (AmE: two thousand, eight hundred forty)
Four-figure numbers ending in 00 can also be said or written as a number of hundreds. For example, 1800 can be said or written as "eighteen hundred"
:: If the number 1963 is being used to identify something, it is said as "one nine six three". We always say each figure separately like this with telephone numbers. If a telephone number contains a double number, we use the word "double":
561 6603 five six one [pause] double six 'oh' three (AmE: five six one [pause] six six 'oh' three)
:: Saying years. We normally say a year in two parts. In the case of years ending in "00", we say the second part in "hundred":
1058 ten fifty-eight
1706 seventeen hundred and six (or 'seventeen oh six')
1865 eighteen sixty-five
1900 nineteen hundred
There are two ways of saying years ending in "01" to "09" before 2000. For example: "1901" can be said as "nineteen oh one" or "nineteen hundred and one". The year 2000 is read "two thousand", 2006 "two thousand and six" (AmE: two thousand six). Post-2010 dates are often said as normal (2010 would be "twenty ten").
:: Flight numbers. We pronounce a flight number in two parts or digit-by-digit. For example:
110 one ten (or 'one one oh')
1248 twelve forty-eight
2503 twenty-five oh three
3050 three oh five oh (or 'three zero five zero', 'thirty fifty')
:: Expressing millions.
1,412,605 one million four hundred (and) twelve thousand six hundred (and) five
2,760,300 two million seven hundred (and) sixty thousand three hundred
Remember: The British use 'and' before tens and ones but the Americans usually leave the 'and' out.
Ways of expressing the number 0
0 = nil
in football and other sports, for scores of 0 (AmE: zero or nothing) |
0 = love
in tennis |
0 = zero
in temperatures to refer to freezing point (0° Celsius, 0° Fahrenheit) |
0 = nought
in mathematics (AmE: zero) |
0 = oh
for telephone numbers |
0 = oh (or zero)
for flight numbers |
Notes:
1. We use zero to express some numerical values such as temperatures, taxes, and interest rates.
2. We can pronounce "0" like the letter "o", when we are reading out numbers figure by figure (e. g. telephone number, flight number, credit card number, etc.)
Fractional numbers
| ½ |
a half |
0.5 |
British English nought
point five
American English zero point five |
| 2½ |
two and a half |
2.5 |
two point five |
| ¼ |
a quarter |
0.25 |
British English nought point two five
American English zero point two five |
| ¾ |
three quarters
American English also three fourths |
0.75 |
British English nought point seven five
American English zero point seven five |
Writing full stops and commas in numbers
Use a full stop (.) to separate the main part of
a number from the decimal part. 3.062 means
'three point nought six two'.
Say point to refer to the full stop. You can use
a comma (,) in large numbers to separate the hundreds, thousands,
and millions. 3,062
means 'three thousand and sixty-two'. In British English, spaces are sometimes
used instead of commas (3 062).
Remember: Speakers of some other languages use (,) and (.) in the opposite way - the commas for the decimals and the points for thousands, millions, etc.
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