Number to words, including the line on a cheque

On a US or Canadian cheque you write One thousand two hundred four and 50/100, then draw a line through whatever space is left over. The word Dollars is already printed at the end of that line, so adding it yourself is a duplication; the cents are written as a fraction over 100 rather than in words, which is faster to write and much harder to alter. On a British, Australian or Indian cheque the same amount is written out in full — one thousand two hundred and four pounds and fifty pence only — with that last word closing the line so nothing can be added after it.

Yes, and leaving it out is the single clearest marker of American usage in spoken numbers. British, Irish, Australian, New Zealand, South African and Indian English all say one hundred and five, two thousand and five, and one thousand two hundred and four; American English says one hundred five and two thousand five. Neither is a mistake, but the and does one useful job in speech: it marks where the last group begins, so a listener hears one hundred and five rather than wondering whether one hundred five is two separate numbers.

It is today — a thousand million, 1,000,000,000, in both. It was not always. Britain used the long scale, where a billion meant a million million and the number between was a milliard, until the government abandoned it: on 20 December 1974 Harold Wilson confirmed to the Commons that billion in official UK statistics would mean a thousand million, matching American usage. The long scale is still alive across most of continental Europe, where German Milliarde and French milliard mean 10⁹ and Billion means 10¹², so a figure quoted from a German source can be a thousand times larger than an English reader assumes. This converter uses the short scale throughout.

One hundred and fifth in British English, one hundred fifth in American — only the final word changes from the cardinal. That is the whole rule: one hundred five becomes one hundred fifth, twenty-one becomes twenty-first, and the hyphen stays where it was. Watch the irregular endings, because they are the ones people get wrong in writing: five gives fifth not fiveth, eight gives eighth with one t, nine gives ninth with the e dropped, twelve gives twelfth, and every word ending in y turns to -ieth, so twenty gives twentieth and forty gives fortieth.

Three point one four — the digits after the point are named one at a time, never as a number. This is the convention in every English-speaking country and it exists to remove ambiguity: three point fourteen could be 3.14 or 3.014, while three point one four can only be one thing. The rule holds however long the tail is, so 0.507 is nought point five nought seven in British speech and zero point five zero seven in American. Money is the exception, which is why the currency setting reads the last two digits as a number of cents instead.

Because it stores numbers as 64-bit floating point, which is exact only up to 9,007,199,254,740,992 — two to the power of 53. Ask it for the next integer up, 9,007,199,254,740,993, and it hands back the even number below, because the odd one has no representation. Credit card numbers, order references and account numbers routinely pass that ceiling. This converter works on the digits as text rather than as arithmetic, so a 66-digit figure is spelled exactly, and the example row includes that particular number so you can watch it survive.

Only where the surrounding style demands it — the words themselves carry no capitals. Running prose keeps them lowercase (a bill for one thousand two hundred pounds), a sentence beginning with a number capitalises the first word only, and cheques are conventionally written with a capital on the first word and nothing else, which is what the First word capitalised setting produces. Contracts sometimes use ALL CAPITALS for the amount to make alteration obvious. The Every Word Capitalised option deliberately leaves and in lowercase, since capitalising a conjunction looks wrong in every style guide that has an opinion.