Writing a number out in English words is mostly mechanical, and the one choice that divides British from American practice is the small word "and". British usage is commonly described as putting it after "hundred", so 105 becomes "one hundred and five". We counted how far that habit reaches. Across the numbers 1 to 999 it changes the wording of 891. Of the numbers from 1 to 999,999 it changes 98.8%. The US Government Publishing Office writes them without it and saves "and" for fractions, and the BBC and Guardian style guides both define a billion as a thousand million.
British usage says "and" in almost every number below a million
The narrowest form of the rule, which we call rule A, puts "and" after "hundred" in any group of three whose last two digits are not 00: "four thousand six hundred and one". A wider form, rule B, also puts it before a final 1 to 99 that follows a larger group, as in "one thousand and five". We spelled out every integer in each range under both rules, and a second, separately written speller agreed on every count.
| Integers | Changed by rule A | Changed by rule B |
|---|---|---|
| 1–999 | 891 (89.2%) | 891 (89.2%) |
| 1–9,999 | 8,910 (89.1%) | 9,801 (98.0%) |
| 1–999,999 | 988,119 (98.8%) | 998,811 (99.9%) |
| 1–999,999,999 | 998,704,971 (99.9%) | 999,881,091 (99.99%) |
Each share is out of every integer in its range, on our counts. In the first thousand, rule A leaves alone only the numbers below 100 and the nine round hundreds, 108 in all. Every further group of three gives the word another place to land, so below a million just 11,880 numbers escape it, by our arithmetic.
The rule itself stands on weaker ground than the arithmetic. No British style guide we could open writes it down; Cambridge's grammar pages sat behind a bot check, and the Oxford and Economist guidance was paywalled or unopened.
GPO's style manual puts the American rule into words
The one manual we opened that sets out either half of the rule is American. Rule 12.20 of the US Government Publishing Office Style Manual (2016 edition) gives the form for spelled-out whole numbers by example: "one hundred fifty-two thousand three hundred five". It shows that form without saying "and" is forbidden.
The second half is more revealing. Any number "containing a fraction or piece of a whole", GPO says, should use "and" when stating the fraction, as in "sixty-two dollars and four cents". In federal style the word has a job: it marks where the whole number ends. The British habit puts the same word inside the whole number, and none of the guides we opened mentions the clash. In that example the word "dollars" keeps the two uses apart, on our reading. GPO also uses "billion" without saying what it means.
BBC and Guardian style guides fall silent on the "and"
British newsrooms have written down what a billion is, and nothing about "and". The BBC News style guide says billion "is widely accepted as meaning 'one thousand million'". The Guardian and Observer style guide gives it a short entry, "one thousand million", and its numbers entry covers figures against words without mentioning "and". The GOV.UK A to Z style guide shows how to format "£138 billion" without stating the value.
The older British billion of a million million, and the 1974 Commons written answer often credited with retiring it, are covered in our guide to why 兆 (zhào) means two different numbers.
Singapore's Bills of Exchange Act lets the words speak louder than the figures
Section 9(2) of Singapore's Bills of Exchange Act 1949, as published on Singapore Statutes Online (current version as at 5 November 2026), reads: "Where the sum payable is expressed in words and also in figures, and there is a discrepancy between the 2, the sum denoted by the words is the amount payable." Section 73(1) brings cheques within it: "A cheque is a bill of exchange drawn on a banker payable on demand." Section 73(2) adds that, "Subject to this Part, the provisions of this Act applicable to a bill of exchange payable on demand apply to a cheque."
The Singapore legislation quoted here is subject to copyright of the Singapore Government and is reproduced with the permission of AGC. Readers may check SSO for the latest version of the Singapore legislation. SSO describes its text as an unofficial version of Singapore legislation.
Section 9(2) says which sum is the amount payable. It does not say a bill must carry words, nor what a bank does with a mismatch. The Association of Banks in Singapore's "FAQs for Cheques" (December 2024) publishes nothing on how to write the amount in words. We could not open Malaysia's Act of the same name.
Decimals, exponents and an empty box leave a converter tongue-tied
A converter can print words naming a different number from the figure beside them, the very mismatch section 9(2) addresses. One cause is reading the box as an integer. JavaScript's parseInt stops at the first character it does not expect, so "12.75" becomes 12 and "1e3" becomes 1, although a browser's number box accepts "1e3" as valid.
Until 5 November 2026 our number to words converter did exactly that. It read 12.75 as "twelve", 1e3 as "one", 1E15 as "one" when it should have refused it as too large, and an empty box as "zero".
The revision made that day reads the typed text as digits and never as a floating-point number. With 12.75 typed, its Decimals menu gives "twelve point seven five", "twelve and 75/100" or "twelve dollars and seventy-five cents". GPO's rule supports the "and" before the fraction; the 75/100 form does not come from GPO. The "Dollars and cents in words" style always prints its unit, so 100.05 reads "one hundred dollars and five cents" and cannot be heard as 105 cents. Both two-place styles refuse 12.345 rather than round it, 1e3 gives "one thousand", and an empty box gets a message. With "Also before a final 1–99" chosen in the And menu, 1005 reads "one thousand and five".
Its ceiling of 999,999,999,999,999 is a limit of vocabulary, because "trillion" is the last scale word it uses. The number is held as digits, so nothing inside that range is rounded. The 53-bit limit of JavaScript numbers is in our guide to counting IPv6 subnets, and lakh and crore in our guide to the South Asian number ladder.
Corporate cheques in Singapore go quiet at the end of 2026
The Association of Banks in Singapore's "Corporate and Retail FAQs" (July 2025) said banks would stop issuing new SGD corporate cheque books from 1 January 2026, and that from 1 January 2027 "All banks will stop processing SGD corporate cheques". The same document says corporate cheque payees "must deposit all corporate cheques by 31 December 2026", and that retail users will still be able to issue and deposit SGD cheques after 2026.
According to the ABS, only retail SGD cheques will clear in Singapore after 2026. The statute quoted above was current on Singapore Statutes Online as of 5 November 2026; the style guides were also read that day.
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