DUMMY NY/La Ball

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Numbers 49 1 365 Names of days, months, and holidays

The truce was signed on Tuesday [not Tues.], April [not Apr.] 16.

Names of people

Robert [not Robt.] Frost wrote accessible poems.

Courses of instruction

I'm majoring in political science [not poli. sci.].

Exercise 48.1 Revising: Abbreviations

Revise the following paragraph as needed to correct inappropriate use of abbreviations for nontechnical writing. If a sentence is correct as given, mark the number preceding it.

1 In an issue of Science magazine, Dr. Virgil L. Sharpton discusses a theory that could help explain the extinction of dinosaurs. 2 According to the theory, a comet or asteroid crashed into the earth about 65 mill. yrs. ago. 3 The result was a huge crater about 10 km. (6.2 mi.) deep in the Gulf of Mex. 4 Sharpton's measurements suggest that the crater is 50 pct. larger than scientists had previously believed. 5 Indeed, 20-yr.- old drilling cores reveal that the crater is about 186 mi. wide, roughly the size of Conn. 6 The space object was traveling more than 100,000 miles per hour and hit earth with the impact of 100 to 300 megatons of TNT. 7 On impact, 200,000 cubic km. of rock and soil were vaporized or thrown into the air. 8 That's the equivalent of 2.34 bill. cubic ft. of mat- ter. 9 The impact would have created 400-ft. tidal waves across the Atl. Ocean, temps. higher than 20,000 degs., and powerful earthquakes. 10 Sharpton theorizes that the dust, vapor, and smoke from this impact blocked the sun's rays for mos., cooled the earth, and thus resulted in the death of the dinosaurs.

49 Numbers

comp I Visit mycomplab.com for more resources and exercises on numbers.

147103.::- This chapter addresses the use of numbers (numerals versus

words) in the text of a document. All disciplines use many more nu- merals in source citations.

Grammar checkers A grammar checker will flag numerals be- ginning sentences and can be customized to ignore or to look for numerals. But it can't tell you whether numerals or spelled-out num- bers are appropriate for your writing situation.

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num 366 49b Numbers

Use numerals according to standard practice in the field you are writing in.

Always use numerals for numbers that require more than two words to spell out:

The leap year has 366 days. The population of Minot, North Dakota, is about 32,800.

In nontechnical academic writing, spell out numbers of one or two words:

Twelve nations signed the treaty. The ball game drew forty-two thousand people. [A hyphenated number may be considered one word.]

In much business writing, use numerals for all numbers over ten: five reasons, 11 participants. In technical academic and business writing, such as in science and engineering, use numerals for all numbers over ten, and use numerals for zero through nine when they refer to exact measurements: 2 liters, 1 hour. (Consult one of the style guides listed in 8 p. 455 and 459 for more details.)

Note Use a combination of numerals and words for round numbers over a million: 26 million, 2.45 billion. And use either all numerals or all words when several numbers appear together in a passage, even if convention would require a mixture.

In standard American English, a comma separates the numerals in long numbers (2600), and a pe-

riod functions as a decimal point (2.06).

49b Use numerals according to convention for dates, addresses, and other information.

Decimals, percentages, and fractions

22.5 3 1/2 48% (or 48 percent)

Scores and statistics

21 to 7 a ratio of 8 to 1 a mean of 26

Pages, chapters, volumes, acts, scenes, lines

Chapter 9, page 123 Hamlet, act 5, scene 3

Exceptions Round dollar or cent amounts of only a few words may be expressed in words: seventeen dollars; sixty cents. When the

49a

Days and years

June 18, 1985

AD 12 456 BCE

2010

The time of day

9:00 AM 3:45 PM

Addresses

355 Clinton Avenue Washington, DC 20036

Exact amounts of money

$3.5 million $4.50

49c

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Beginning sentences 49c 367

word o'clock is used for the time of day, also express the number in words: two o'clock (not 2 o'clock).

Spell out numbers that begin sentences.

For clarity, spell out any number that begins a sentence. If the number requires more than two words, reword the sentence so that the number falls later and can be expressed as a numeral.

Not 3.9 billion people live in Asia.

But The population of Asia is 3.9 billion.

Exercise 49.1 Revising: Numbers

Revise the following paragraphs so that numbers are used appropriately for nontechnical writing. If a sentence is correct as given, mark the num- ber preceding it.

1 The planet Saturn is nine hundred million miles, or nearly one bil- lion five hundred million kilometers, from the sun. 2 Saturn orbits the sun only two and four-tenths times during the average human life span. 3 As a result, a year on Saturn equals almost thirty of our years. 4 The planet travels in its orbit at about twenty-one thousand six hundred miles per hour.

Saturn is huge: more than seventy-two thousand miles in diame- ter, compared to Earth's eight-thousand-mile diameter. 6 Saturn is also very cold, with an average temperature of minus two hundred and eigh- teen degrees Fahrenheit, compared to Earth's fifty-nine degrees Fahren- heit. 7 Saturn is cold because of its great distance from the sun and be- cause its famous rings reflect almost 70 percent of the sunlight that approaches the planet. 8 The ring system is almost forty thousand miles wide, beginning 8800 miles from the planet's visible surface and ending forty-seven thousand miles from that surface.