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Thursday, March 22, 2012

Expressing Numbers in English

Recently a student asked me about how to express numbers..... think about this:
1,235  How would you say it?
One thousand, two hundred and thirty five
an interesting note:  in British English we put in 'and'
in American English the 'and' is eliminated

Here is an interesting website for ESL learners:
www.esl.about.com
There are many links and lots of activities!  Enjoy!

When expressing large numbers (more than one hundred) read in groups of hundreds. The order is as follows: billion, million, thousand, hundred. Notice that hundred, thousand, etc. is NOT followed by an ‘s’.
Two hundred NOT two hundreds
NOTE: British English takes 'and' between 'hundred and ...' American English omits 'and'. In the examples below, this is represented: (AND)
Hundreds
350 – three hundred (AND) fifty 425 – four hundred (AND) twenty five
Thousands
15,560 – fifteen thousand five hundred (AND) sixty 786,450 – seven hundred (AND) six thousand four hundred (AND) fifty
Millions
2,450,000 – two million four hundred (AND) fifty thousands 234,700,000 – two hundred (AND) thirty-four million seven hundred thousand

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