[seqfan] Re: How to speak long numbers -- now I'm really curious (-:

[Andrew N W Hone]

I tend to use "and" in the same way as Alex M.

I don't know if there's a difference between American and British English in this regard.

Andy 
________________________________________
From: seqfan-bounces at list.seqfan.eu [seqfan-bounces at list.seqfan.eu] On Behalf Of Alex M [timeroot.alex at gmail.com]
Sent: 27 September 2011 00:07
To: Sequence Fanatics Discussion list
Subject: [seqfan] Re: How to speak long numbers -- now I'm really curious (-:

I, too, have been told that "and" is to be used only for fractions, i.e
"1,234,567" is "one million, two hundred thirty-four thousand, five hundred
sixty seven", and "12 1/2" is "twelve and one half", and "12.34" should
technically be "twelve and thirty-four hundredths" - this last one is now
fairly rare, though, so we say "twelve point three four".
I, personally, find it absolutely fine to use "and" for separating numbers.
The way I prefer, and which I find the "most correct", is to include an
"and" if and only if anywhere between two non-zero digits does it cross from
the hundreds place to the tens place, or if it is directly from a 100*10^3n
place to a 10*10^3n place. For instance:
1,234 = One thousand, two hundred and thirty four
1,200 = One thousand, two hundred
1,004 = One thousand and four
1,000,394 = One million, three hundred and ninety-four
1,394,000 = One million, three hundred and ninety-four thousand
1,300,000 = One million, three hundred thousand
1,300,004 = One million, three hundred thousand and four
1,300,400 = One million, three hundred thousand, four hundred

This is just how I perceive it, of course...

~6 out of 5 statisticians say that the
number of statistics that either make
no sense or use ridiculous timescales
at all has dropped over 164% in the
last 5.62474396842 years.



On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 3:39 PM, <franktaw at netscape.net> wrote:

> Well, the rule in the OEIS is that you never put commas in the "digits
> version". Where such commas are used, they are generally used for any number
> with four or more digits - so, if you're going to write 12,347 you would
> also write 5,347. This is especially true when you writing numbers in
> columns in order to add them up.
>
> The rule I was taught was that you never use "and" in the name of any
> integer. People often do, of course. I never noticed any particular rules
> about it.
>
> Franklin T. Adams-Watters
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robert Munafo <mrob27 at gmail.com>
>
> I have found some folks over on math-fun who have encountered "and" when
> spelling out (or I guess speaking) names of numbers over 1000. Also a lot
> of
> disagreement to my claim that commas should be written in the same places
> where the comma would appear in the digits version.
>
> But no-one is giving specific rules (yet :-) and I've spent a while looking
> but haven't found any rules myself. (Just isolated examples without
> explanation)
>
> So here are some questions for our colleagues who speak the word "and" as
> part of a number name -- and regarding the comma, consider how you would
> write it out in words:
>
>  * Do you ever or always use "and" after a power of 1000 if something else
> follows? ("one million and thirty thousand")
>
>  * Do you ever or always use "and" in places where there would be a comma
> in the digits? ("five thousand three hundred forty seven" but "twelve
> thousand and three hundred forty seven")
>
>  * Or instead of "and" would you put a comma in the words? ("twelve
> thousand, three hundred forty seven")
>
>  * Do you use "and" wherever there are 0s between digits? ("one hundred and
> seven")
>
>  * Do you do two or more of the above? ("five thousand and one hundred and
> one" or maybe "five thousand, one hundred and one")
>
>  * Do you put "and" anywhere else? ("three hundred and forty seven")
>
>  * Does it matter how many syllables the part after "and" has? ("one
> thousand and twelve" but "one thousand seventy-seven")
>
>  * Other rules?
>
>  * If you consider it proper usage in only part of the English speaking
> world (like the UK, Australia, Canada, U.S. etc.) let me know that too.
>
> It would be nice to formalize this, because it is used a lot, and almost
> everything else in OEIS never uses "and", and is mute on commas.
>
> I found 7 OEIS sequences where it is clear if they use "and" or not, there
> might be more...
>
> A005589 includes a PARI program which gives A005589(1000)=11
> and A005589(1001)=14.
> A052360 has the same program.
> A052363 agrees with A005589 and A052360 because it includes 1103 but not
> 1077.
> A058230 specifically claims "not to put the word 'and' in the names of
> numbers"
> A092320 agrees because it contains 1005.
> A134629 uses Noll's program. [1]
>
> *but* A126259 uses "and" in its spelling of 108
>
> - Robert Munafo
>
> [1] http://isthe.com/cgi-bin/**number.cgi<http://isthe.com/cgi-bin/number.cgi>
>
> On Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 13:33, Victor Miller <victorsmiller at gmail.com>**
> wrote:
>
>  On the program cartalk last week, there was a puzzle of the following
>>
> form:
>
>>   A list of numbers was given, and one was asked what they had in
>>
> common
>
>> (I give the actual puzzler at the end).  The answer was that each of
>> these numbers was divisible by the number of letters (excluding
>> spaces) in the standard spelling out of the number in words.  This got
>> me to thinking of the following modification:
>> [...] (there followed speculation about A092320 vs. A126259)
>>
>>  --
>  Robert Munafo  --  mrob.com
>  Follow me at: gplus.to/mrob - fb.com/mrob27 - twitter.com/mrob_27 -
> mrob27.wordpress.com - youtube.com/user/mrob143 - rilybot.blogspot.com
>
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