OST164 Text Editing Applications Section 4 – Numbers Part I

Basic Rules (401) Spell out numbers 1 through 10. I would like ten copies of this article. My cat had five kittens. There were nine students in class yesterday. Use figures for numbers above 10. We expect about 30 to 35 employees to sign up. We received 75 requests for your book. I think 300 people replied that they were coming.

Numbers (402) Use the same style to express related numbers above and below 10. If any of the numbers are above 10, put them all in figures. We now have 5 dogs, 11 cats, and 1 rabbit. In one sitting, our four sons consumed a total of 18 hamburgers, 5 large bottles of diet Coke, 12 Dove Bars; and 12 bags of chips. I have 5 students in first period, 13 students in second period, and 24 students in third period. Note: In the names of organizations and products, follow the organization’s style.

Numbers (403) For fast comprehension, numbers in the millions or higher should be expressed as follows: 21 million 14 ½ million “or” 14.5 million This style may be used only when the amount consists of a whole number with nothing more than a simple fraction or decimal following. (A number such as 4,832,067 must be written all in figures.) Treat related numbers alike. Last year, we sold 21,557,000 items; this year, nearly 23,000,000. He sold 1,000,000 copies of his book last year; however, this year, he sold 1,600,000 copies of the revised book.

Special Rules - Dates (407) When the day precedes the month or stands alone, express it in ordinal figures (1 st, 2 nd, 3 rd, etc.) for emphasis. This year’s conference runs from Monday, the 2nd of August, through Thursday, the 5th. When the day precedes the month or stands alone, express it in ordinal words (the first, the second, the third, etc.) for more formality. We leave for Australia and New Zealand on the third of June and return on the twenty-fifty. When the day follows the month, use a cardinal figure (1, 2, 3) to express it. I will visit with my new grandbaby on March 5. The workshop is scheduled for June 25 and July 30.

Special Rules - Dates (408) Express complete dates in month-day-year sequence. March 6, 2007 In United States military correspondence and in letters from foreign countries, the complete date is expressed in day-month-year sequence. 6 March 2007 The form 3/20/06 should be avoided in business correspondence or at the beginning of a letter or memorandum.

Special Rules - Dates (409-a) When you make reference to a previous document in the first sentence of a document you are composing, it is usually sufficient to cite only the month and day. Thank you for your letter of May 22, in which…. However, in cases where there can be no room for the slightest ambiguity-such as in a legal document-it is safer to cite the full month-day-year. Thank you for your letter of December 23, 2006, in which…

Special Rules - Dates (409-b) When you make reference to dates elsewhere in the document you are composing, the decision to include or omit the year in these dates will depend on the nature of the document. –If the dates are significant from a legal perspective, include the year. –In ordinary correspondence, when it is clear from the content that the subsequent dates all fall within the same year as the one shown in the date line or in the first sentence in your document, the use of month and day alone is sufficient.

Special Rules - Dates (411) In formal invitations and proclamations, spell out the day and the year. A number of styles may be used: Day May twenty-first the twenty-first of May the twenty-first day of May Year Two thousand and seven

Special Rules - Dates (412) Well-known years in history may appear in abbreviated form. An apostrophe is used to represent the figures omitted from the year. the stock market crash in ’29 the gold rush of ’49 Years also appear in abbreviated form in certain business expressions: fiscal year 2005/2006 the fall ’05/winter ’06 catalog Class graduation years often appear in abbreviated form: the class of ’99 the class of ‘05