Does anyone know why, in certain types of formal writing, it’s customary to write numbers in both their numerical and spelled-out form?
I’m guessing it’s an attempt at making errors more evident (i.e., “you have just won two (4) million dollars”), but if so it seems like a rather feeble one. I know if I was writing a document in this format, it would be far more likely for me to make an error involving both instances of the number, rather than just one. And, if someone is writing something so important that it needs to be completely error-free, I’d hope they’d proofread it anyway in order to catch errors in the words themselves. It’s not as if the entirety of the documents are typed (typed) like (like) this (this). (.)
I think it’s error prevention. In most cases if you grable the spellgni of a word a bit it doesn’t change the mneaing, but the difference between “1” and “10” (hey, it’s only one character!) can be huge.
One of my old college roomies was an urban planner and was on a bid review board; they got a bid for something like “63,00” dollars…does that mean 6,300 or perhaps 63,000? Due to some rules (a little silly IMHO) they had to decide on the spot and could not ask the bidder for a clarification.
In the news biz, where everything happens in a hurry, numbers are sometimes written that way. Wire stories usually have (M) million and (B) billion done just that way.
It’s done in places where there is no legal reason, so I think the answer is what Valgard says: even a very slight typo can radically change the value of a number, so you want to make sure.
Yu caan stil undrstand ths sentense prefectly cleerly wiht erors ni eery woord, nubt yyou dotn’ knw hatw “1,00” mneas att al.
(Is it one thousand, one hundred, or a European writing one with three digits of precision (‘1.00’ in the US))
Lay off the lawyers, eh? I can’t think of any instance in which the law requires this. The only places in which such redundancy seems to be customary is in documents related to contracts/transactions, such as cheques, purchase orders, etc. Those are the only places I have seen it done.
Yeah, it is. It’s a clarity thing. As an example, let me cite this bit from my home state’s (Texas’s) Business and Commerce Code, as it relates to negotiable instruments (which covers checks):
Not that it ever comes into play all that often, but isn’t it nice to know that if you goof and write $150.00 rather than $15.00, but you wrote “Fifteen” in longhand, the word controls over the number?
The OP is not referring to chequing or financial clarity, but formal writing. My guess, and that is all it is, is that it may be a form of the “his/her” usage. Some folks may like the numbers spelled out and others may want them in numeric form.
The OP is not referring to chequing or financial clarity, but formal writing. My guess, and that is all it is, is that it may be a form of the “his/her” usage. Some folks may like the numbers spelled out and others may want them in numeric form.
Doesn’t always mean there’s a law, though. What about “our lawyers made us say this”? Just a way to avoid liability. For example, it’s not illegal for me to not shovel my driveway. But… you, as a lawyer (not in my jurisdiction, not my lawyer, yeah, I know the drill :)), may advise me to shovel the driveway to avoid civil litigation when the UPS guy falls, cracks his skull, and dies. So there’s a valid sentiment in saying “damn lawyers,” even when not all of them are damnable.
