Numbers in English: how to say, write and spell them

English numbers are easy to build and easy to mishear. The system is simple: learn about twenty words and you can say any number up to a billion. The hard parts are a few spellings, the sound of thirteen against thirty, and some small rules about and, s and commas. This page covers all of them.

Zero to twelve: learn these as words

The first thirteen numbers have no pattern. Learn them as words, the way you learn cat or house:

Three sounds to watch:

• three starts with th (tongue between the teeth). Without it, three sounds like tree.
• five and seven have a real v (top teeth on the bottom lip), not a b or a w.
• eight sounds like ate. The gh is silent.

One and two are also odd to read: one sounds like won, and two sounds like too and to.

Thirteen to nineteen: the -teens

From 13 to 19 English adds -teen to the digit. That is why people aged 13 to 19 are called teenagers.

Three of them change the digit: thirteen (not threeteen), fifteen (not fiveteen), and eighteen, which has only one t (not eightteen).

Twenty to ninety: the -ty tens

The tens add -ty:

The same changes come back: thirty, fifty, and eighty with one t. And one more that catches almost everyone: forty has no u. Four and fourteen keep it; forty drops it. Fourty is wrong, and it is one of the most common spelling mistakes in the language. Ninety, on the other hand, keeps the e of nine.

Thirteen or thirty? The stress

These pairs sound close, and in a noisy shop or on the phone they are easy to mix up: 13 and 30, 14 and 40, 15 and 50, all the way to 19 and 90.

The difference is the stress, the strong part of the word:

• -teen numbers are strong at the end: thirTEEN, fifTEEN. The ee is long and you hear a clear n.
• -ty numbers are strong at the front: THIRty, FIFty. The end is short and weak. In American English the t in -ty often sounds like a soft d (thirdy).

Now the bad news. When you count (thirteen, fourteen, fifteen), or when a noun comes straight after the number (thirteen people), the stress on -teen often moves to the front. Then thirteen and thirty sound very close indeed.

Native speakers mishear them too, so they check: Sorry, one three or three oh? Do the same when a price, a time or a room number matters. And when you say a -teen number yourself, give the end its full long ee and its n.

Twenty-one to ninety-nine: tens plus a digit, with a hyphen

Every number from 21 to 99 is a ten plus a digit, in that order:

• 21 = twenty-one
• 45 = forty-five
• 99 = ninety-nine

When you write these numbers in words, put a hyphen (-) between the two parts: twenty-one, not twenty one. Nothing else changes: English has no and inside these numbers, and the digit never changes its form.

A hundred and one: hundred, and the British "and"

For 100, say a hundred or one hundred. A hundred is the normal everyday choice; one hundred sounds more exact, and people use it when they want to be clear. Both are correct. After thousand, though, you must use one: 2,100 is two thousand one hundred, never two thousand a hundred.

Then comes the most British rule in this page. In British English, you put and after hundred when a smaller number follows, and after thousand when what follows is under a hundred:

• 101 = a hundred and one
• 250 = two hundred and fifty
• 3,005 = three thousand and five
• 999 = nine hundred and ninety-nine

In American English, people often leave the and out: two hundred fifty. Both are understood everywhere. Some American teachers say the and is wrong, but it is standard English everywhere else; this page uses the British form.

Hundred, thousand, million: no s after a number

This rule catches almost every learner once. After a number, hundred, thousand and million never take an s:

• two hundred people (not two hundreds)
• five thousand pounds (not five thousands)
• three million years (not three millions)

But when there is no number in front, you add the s and the word of:

• hundreds of people
• thousands of pounds
• millions of years

This means a large number that you are not counting exactly. Two hundred people is a fact; hundreds of people is a lot of people. The same rule works with dozen (twelve): two dozen eggs, but dozens of eggs. The words are also in the Numbers and amounts lesson in chapter 8 of the English course.

Big numbers: thousand, million, billion

English groups big numbers in threes. There is no separate word for ten thousand, as there is in Chinese or Japanese: it is just ten thousand.

A billion is a thousand million: 1,000,000,000.

Be careful if your own language has a word that looks like it. French billion, German Billion, Spanish billón and Italian bilione mean a million million, which English calls a trillion. Their word for a thousand million (French milliard, German Milliarde, Italian miliardo, Spanish mil millones) is simply a billion in English. British English also used the old meaning once, but since the 1970s a British billion has meant a thousand million, the same as in America.

Commas and points

English writes numbers the opposite way from much of Europe:

• The comma separates thousands: 1,000, 25,000, 3,500,000.
• The point (a full stop) marks the decimal: 1.5, 0.25, 3.14.

So 1,500 in English is one thousand five hundred, and 1.500 would be read as one point five. In German, Spanish, French and many other languages it is the other way round. Take care with prices and data.

Say the decimal point as point, and read the digits after it one by one: 3.14 is three point one four, never three point fourteen. Money is different: £2.50 is two pounds fifty, and $9.99 is nine dollars ninety-nine.

Zero: oh, nought, nil or zero?

English has four ways to say 0. Which one depends on where the 0 is:

Zero is never wrong, and Americans use it in most of these places (zero point five). With phone numbers, British speakers also say double for a digit that comes twice: 7755 is double seven double five. And in tennis, 0 is love.

Ordinals: first, second, third, fourth

Ordinal numbers put things in order. Most add -th: fourth, sixth, tenth, hundredth. Three are words of their own, and a few change their spelling:

Watch eighth (only one t, then h), ninth (no e), twelfth (ve becomes f), and twentieth, where the y becomes ie. In bigger numbers only the last part changes: 21st is twenty-first, 32nd is thirty-second, 103rd is a hundred and third. But 11th, 12th and 13th end in -th: eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth.

Saying years

Years have their own rule. Split a four-digit year into two pairs:

• 1984 = nineteen eighty-four
• 1776 = seventeen seventy-six
• 1900 = nineteen hundred
• 1905 = nineteen oh five

The years from 2000 to 2009 are said as thousands: 2000 is two thousand, 2005 is two thousand and five (American: two thousand five). From 2010, both ways are normal: 2025 is twenty twenty-five or two thousand and twenty-five. The pairs are more common in speech.

Decades use the -ty word with an s: the eighties (the 1980s), the nineties. And people in their twenties are between 20 and 29.

Mistakes English learners make

And thirteen for thirty: stress the end of -teen numbers, and check important numbers with one three or three oh?

What to do next

1. Do the five drills below.
2. Say your phone number aloud in English, with oh and double in the right places.
3. Say the year you were born as two pairs, without stopping.