---
title: "Numbers in words — how to spell any number"
description: "How to write numbers in words, with the ordinal form, the British spelling, the cheque line, and where each word comes from. Covers 0 to a billion."
url: https://atoneplace.net/number-to-words/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Numbers in words

English numbers are built from about thirty words. Everything up to a billion is a combination of them, following three rules that hold without exception.

## The three rules

1. Numbers from 21 to 99 are hyphenated when they have two parts: forty-two, not forty two.
2. British English inserts "and" before the last part of a number over 100 — "one hundred and five". American English omits it.
3. Group names never take a plural when counting: "three hundred", not "three hundreds". They pluralise only when vague, as in "hundreds of people".

## The building blocks

*Forty has no "u" — fourteen and forty are spelled differently, which is the most common mistake.*

| Number | Word | Number | Word |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | one | 11 | eleven |
| 2 | two | 12 | twelve |
| 3 | three | 13 | thirteen |
| 4 | four | 20 | twenty |
| 5 | five | 30 | thirty |
| 6 | six | 40 | forty |
| 7 | seven | 50 | fifty |
| 8 | eight | 100 | one hundred |
| 9 | nine | 1,000 | one thousand |
| 10 | ten | 1,000,000 | one million |

## Commonly looked up

- [0 in words](https://atoneplace.net/number-to-words/0/) — zero
- [8 in words](https://atoneplace.net/number-to-words/8/) — eight
- [11 in words](https://atoneplace.net/number-to-words/11/) — eleven
- [12 in words](https://atoneplace.net/number-to-words/12/) — twelve
- [13 in words](https://atoneplace.net/number-to-words/13/) — thirteen
- [15 in words](https://atoneplace.net/number-to-words/15/) — fifteen
- [19 in words](https://atoneplace.net/number-to-words/19/) — nineteen
- [20 in words](https://atoneplace.net/number-to-words/20/) — twenty
- [21 in words](https://atoneplace.net/number-to-words/21/) — twenty-one
- [40 in words](https://atoneplace.net/number-to-words/40/) — forty
- [42 in words](https://atoneplace.net/number-to-words/42/) — forty-two
- [50 in words](https://atoneplace.net/number-to-words/50/) — fifty
- [60 in words](https://atoneplace.net/number-to-words/60/) — sixty
- [70 in words](https://atoneplace.net/number-to-words/70/) — seventy
- [80 in words](https://atoneplace.net/number-to-words/80/) — eighty
- [90 in words](https://atoneplace.net/number-to-words/90/) — ninety
- [100 in words](https://atoneplace.net/number-to-words/100/) — one hundred
- [1,000 in words](https://atoneplace.net/number-to-words/1000/) — one thousand
- [2,000 in words](https://atoneplace.net/number-to-words/2000/) — two thousand
- [2,026 in words](https://atoneplace.net/number-to-words/2026/) — two thousand twenty-six
- [10,000 in words](https://atoneplace.net/number-to-words/10000/) — ten thousand
- [100,000 in words](https://atoneplace.net/number-to-words/100000/) — one hundred thousand
- [1,000,000 in words](https://atoneplace.net/number-to-words/1000000/) — one million

## Common questions

### Is it "one hundred and five" or "one hundred five"?

Both are correct in their own dialect. British English uses "and" before the final part; American English leaves it out. Neither is a mistake.

### When do you hyphenate numbers in words?

Between the tens and the units, from twenty-one to ninety-nine. Nothing else in an English number is hyphenated.

### Why is it "forty" and not "fourty"?

Historical spelling drift. Four, fourteen and fourth all keep the "u"; forty lost it in the sixteenth century and never got it back. There is no rule behind it — it simply has to be remembered.

## Sources

- Calculated on this page — At One Place (/about/)