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Germanic · Worldwide

Numbers in
English

Hyphens, commas, no-and, short billion.
10 minread
7sections
billion = 10⁹(short scale)
1,000,000,000
one billion
00

The big picture

English is the baseline most learners on this site are coming from. It has fewer rules than its neighbors — no gender, no case agreement, no fused compounds. But it does have spelling oddities every native struggles to explain (forty, not fourty), a regional and-split between UK and US, and the short-scale billion that confuses everyone in Europe.

i
If you only remember one thing: a billion in English is 10⁹, not 10¹². If you came here from Spanish, French, German, Italian, Dutch, or Russian — your billón / milliard / Milliarde / miliardo / miljard / миллиард is the English billion. Your billón / Billion / biljoen is the English trillion.
01

Zero to twenty

0–12 are unique words. 13–19 use the -teen suffix, with internal vowel shifts on fifteen and eighteen (the latter only one t, not two).

0
zero
1
one
2
two
3
three
4
four
5
five
6
six
7
seven
8
eight
9
nine
10
ten
11
eleven
12
twelve
13
thirteen
14
fourteen
v→f
15
fifteen
16
sixteen
17
seventeen
one t
18
eighteen
19
nineteen
20
twenty
02

20 – 99: tens & hyphens

The tens have a quirk every native gets wrong on muscle memory: forty, not fourty. Compound numbers 21–99 always use a hyphen between the ten and the unit: twenty-one, forty-two, ninety-nine.

The tens

20
twenty
30
thirty
no u
40
forty
v→f
50
fifty
60
sixty
70
seventy
one t
80
eighty
90
ninety

Compounds 21 – 99: hyphen required

21
twenty-one
35
thirty-five
42
forty-two
58
fifty-eight
67
sixty-seven
76
seventy-six
89
eighty-nine
99
ninety-nine
!
The hyphen is grammatical. Numbers from twenty-one to ninety-nine take a hyphen when written out, even in continuous prose. "She is twenty-three years old." Style guides agree on this — it's not optional.
03

Hundreds & thousands

Predictable composition — just put the digit before hundred, thousand. Two regional things to know: UK English inserts "and" between hundreds and tens (two hundred and forty-five), US English doesn't (two hundred forty-five). And commas separate every three digits.

one / a
100
one hundred / a hundred
200
two hundred
500
five hundred
900
nine hundred
one / a
1,000
one thousand / a thousand
2,000
two thousand
10,000
ten thousand
100,000
one hundred thousand

UK vs US: the "and"

UK English
245
two hundred and forty-five

British convention puts and between the hundreds and the rest. Standard in British schoolbooks, newspapers, the BBC.

US English
245
two hundred forty-five

American convention drops the and. Including it sounds slightly old-fashioned or British to American ears.

!
The "and" is decimals territory in US English. Americans reserve and for the spot the decimal point would go: two hundred and fifty-five hundredths = 200.55. Conflating that with a thousands-separator and can cause confusion in formal/financial contexts.

In the wild

245
two hundred forty-five / two hundred and forty-five (UK)
2,345
two thousand three hundred forty-five
10,498
ten thousand four hundred ninety-eight
04

Millions & the short billion

English uses the short scale — each new "-illion" is 1,000× the last one. Million = 10⁶, billion = 10⁹, trillion = 10¹². Most European languages use the long scale, where their billion-cognate means 10¹². This is the single biggest cross-language gotcha on this site.

1 M
one million
2 M
two million
55 M
fifty-five million
10⁹
1 B
one billion
2 B
two billion
10¹²
1 T
one trillion
English · short scale
1,000,000,000
one billion

Each scale word is 10³ × the previous. Thousand → million → billion → trillion, separated by 10³ each step.

European · long scale
1.000.000.000
mil millones · milliard · Milliarde · miliardo · miljard · миллиард

Each "-illion" word jumps 10⁶ instead of 10³. The intermediate 10⁹ gets a separate milliard-family word. Billion-cognate means 10¹².

!
Plural-less in count constructions. Unlike European number-nouns (Spanish dos millones, French deux millions), English million / billion / trillion stay singular when counted: two million dollars, three billion stars. Add an -s only for indefinite "millions of" (millions of people).
05

Ordinals

The first three are irregular: first, second, third. After that, mostly just add -th to the cardinal — but four cards below have spelling tweaks that catch even native writers.

irreg
1st
first
irreg
2nd
second
irreg
3rd
third
4th
fourth
v→f
5th
fifth
6th
sixth
7th
seventh
one t
8th
eighth
drop e
9th
ninth
10th
tenth
11th
eleventh
v→f
12th
twelfth
20th
twentieth
21st
twenty-first
100th
one hundredth
!
Compound ordinals: only the last word becomes ordinal. 21st = twenty-first, 43rd = forty-third, 101st = one hundred first, 1,000th = one thousandth. Same logic as the cardinal compound: build left-to-right, only adjust the final piece.
06

Things to remember

Five rules that will save you from the most common mistakes — even as a native speaker.

1.
Billion is 10⁹, not 10¹². English is short-scale. Every other big European language on this site uses long-scale, where their billion-cognate is your trillion.
2.
Forty, not fourty. The only ten that drops a letter from the cardinal. Also: fifteen / fifty (v→f from five), eighteen / eighty (single t, not double).
3.
Hyphenate 21–99. Twenty-one, forty-two, ninety-nine. Always. Style guides agree.
4.
UK has "and", US doesn't. Two hundred and forty-five (UK) vs two hundred forty-five (US). Pick the convention that matches your audience.
5.
Four ordinals have spelling exceptions. Fifth, eighth, ninth, twelfth — the four most-misspelled ordinals in English. The rest are just cardinal + -th.
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