Numbers

Simple numbers

Learning the numbers in English is done fairly early on. Counting up to a hundred is fairly simple even if you haven’t been learning English for a long time. It get’s a little more difficult however when we go higher. Let’s have a recap of the bigger numbers as well as clarifying a few things.

In British English, whenever there is a number after a hundred, we have to join it with ‘and‘. You will often hear natives shorten this to an ‘n‘ sound.

805 = eight hundred and five

🇺🇸 In American English the ‘and’ is often dropped. (e.g “nine hundred ninety nine” not “nine hundred and ninety nine”). This depends on where (and whom) you speak to though.

Here is a table showing where the ‘and‘ is placed in different numbers up to the millions range.

number	millions	hundred thousands	+	ten thousands	thousand	hundreds	+	tens	ones
87								eighty	seven
103						one hundred	and		three
125						one hundred	and	twenty	five
200						two hundred
208						two hundred	and		eight
2,500					two thousand	five hundred
35,005				thirty	five thousand		and		five
858,645		eight hundred	and	fifty	eight thousand	six hundred	and	forty	five
2,450,803	two million	four hundred	and	fifty	thousand	eight hundred	and		three
9,999,999	nine million	nine hundred	and	ninety	nine thousand	nine hundred	and	ninety	nine

Decimal points

When we read decimal points in english (e.g 57.88) we read the number before the decimal point as a regular number. After the decimal point though we read each digit individually.

78.50 = seventy eight point five zero

Here are some examples showing how to read a few more decimal numbers.

number	before decimal point	decimal point	after decimal point
5.5	five	point	five
7.85	seven	point	eight five
15.15	fifteen	point	one five
20.350	twenty	point	three five zero
30.006	thirty	point	zero zero six

Telephone numbers

When we read telephone numbers we often read out each digit individually.

07521 891532 = zero seven five two one eight nine one five three two

In British English we can also use the words ‘double‘ (for groups of two), or ‘triple‘ for groups of three). This however isn’t used in American English.

07771 556672 = zero triple seven one double five double six seven two

Sometimes you’ll hear the number ‘0’ pronounced as ‘oh’ (the letter) e.g 520 = five two oh.

Dates

The names of numbers change slightly when we talk about dates. Instead of one, two, three etc we have the first, second and third. After the third we add ‘th’ to the end of a number, the spelling does however change ever so slightly with some. After we get past the twentieth the pattern repeats (e.g twenty first, twenty second etc).

first
second
third
fourth
fifth
sixth
seventh
eighth
ninth
tenth
eleventh
twelfth
thirteenth
fourteenth
fifteenth
sixteenth
seventeenth
eighteenth
nineteenth
twentieth

Also sometimes when written down we will see dates such as ‘5 December’, ‘2 June’, ‘3 August’. When reading these out we will need to add a few extra words (‘the‘ & ‘of‘) and change the reading of the number.

5 December = the fifth of December

2 June = the second of June

3 August = the third of August

🇺🇸 In American English the month comes before the day and we don’t need a definite article before so… July 6 = July sixth.

Other symbols

There are other symbols that you will find around numbers, particularly in maths / statistics.

‘-‘ = minus/ negative

e.g ‘-50’ = minus fifty

‘%’ = percent

e.g ‘80%’ = eighty percent

‘+’ = plus

e.g ‘2 + 2’ = two plus two

‘x’ = times

e.g ‘5x’ = five times

‘=’ = equals

e.g ‘3 + 3 = 6’ = three plus three equals six

Practise exercise

Fill in the gap for each sentence:-