Writing In Numbers

Monday, May 3

Several times in writing you'll have a character counting, n
 umbers engraved on doors, or a rough estimate of how many guards are chasing them. So what's the proper way to write these numbers; numerical or linguistic?

The official "rule" is to spell out numbers greater than ten (10).
Eleven or more, basically

But I feel that there are some exceptions when it comes to the emotional appeal of writing a story.

For me, I feel that as a writer, you should just write out the numbers, regardless of it being lower than eleven. A numerical "12" jumps off the page when it's completely surrounded by words.

But sometimes, that's what we want. If you are describing imagery, something the reader needs to visualize, I believe that you should write it how it appears to the characters. (How many doors have "twelve" written on them versus "12"?) For example, do they see;



OR



But that's just my opinion. What do you think?

4 comment(s):

Anonymous,  Monday, May 03, 2010  

I've always struggled with that in my writing, and I don't know what exactly to do about it! For example, is my character 23 or twenty-three? Is it 10:00 or ten o'clock??? :/

Mary Monday, May 03, 2010  

Ooh, this problem has hit my writing before too. I agree with the door idea.

Anonymous,  Tuesday, May 04, 2010  

No, actually that's very helpful! Thanks!

joe Monday, November 07, 2016  

Sometime we need to write in numbers for superior papers and complete our assignments. Learn here how to adjust number in our writings well like professionals.

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