1
First, it's important to learn the spelling of small numbers,
since larger numbers are built upon those numbers.
The first twenty are:
one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,
eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, and twenty.
Take careful note of four and eight, which are homonyms for other unrelated words.
2
Once we get past twenty, we must start using a hyphen.
For example, the number 23 is written twenty-three.
It's not a big deal, but the proper way to do this is using a hyphen as shown.
Another example would be 78 written as seventy-eight.
3
For numbers bigger than 100, we don't say the word "and."
Everybody does, including the famous Disney movie about the dogs, but it's not correct.
For example, the number 101 is written "one hundred one."
The number 736 is written "seven hundred thirty-six."
Notice there is no hyphen in between the number of hundreds and the word "hundred,"
but there is between the thirty and the six. Again, there is no "and."
4
The reason why we don't write or say "and" in those numbers
is because we use the word "and" to imply a decimal point.
For example, although we could say 7.2 as "seven point two,"
the proper way to say or write this number is "seven and two tenths."
We use the "and" to mean the decimal point.
Another example is 234.79, which we would write as
"two hundred thirty-four and seventy-nine hundredths."
5
Speaking of decimal points,
it's important to understand that place values to the right of a decimal point include the letters "th."
That is why we used the words "tenths" and "hundredths" above.
6
In order to properly write large and small numbers,
you must have an understanding of place value,
but that goes outside the scope of this article.
For example, you must learn to recognize 3,020,007 as "three million twenty thousand seven."
Similarly, you should learn to recognize 0.005 as "five thousandths."
7
Again, none of this is a big deal,
but knowing how to do this task properly will result in better test scores
especially in the lower grades where this is emphasized.
It will also allow you to write your numbers properly in formal writing.
See the Resource section below for more about this topic.
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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 30 Thirty 31 Thirty-one (37 thirty-seven) 40 Forty 50 Fifty 60 Sixty 70 Seventy 80 Eighty 90 Ninety (99 ninety-nine) 100 One hundred 101 One hundred one 499 Four hundred ninety-nine 748 Seven hundred forty-eight
1,000 One thousand
1,003 One thousand three
1,049 One thousand forty-nine
10,000 Ten thousand
11,000 Eleven thousand
25,608 Twenty-five thousand, six hundred eight
100,000 One hundred thousand
1,010,010 One million, ten thousand ten
1,000,000,024 One billion, twenty-four