dialogue and numbers

[zarch]

In the event that this has been addressed elsewhere, I'll keep it short.

"Hey babe, how old are you?"

Is it...

A) "I'm only seventeen, you freaking perv."

OR

B) "I'm only 17, you freaking perv."


?

[James D. Macdonald]

From one to ninety-nine, spell 'em out. Over 100, use numbers.

[veronie]

As a side note to Uncle Jim, newspaper style is to spell 'em out from one to nine and use numerals 10 and above. It's done to save space. Much more formal, too.

[Jamesaritchie]

In dialogue, I think it's best to always spell them out. The "99" rule is for narrative. Primarily nonfiction narrative. No one speaks a number. It can't be done. We speak words. Whether we're saying "one," or whether we're saying one million, nine hundred thousand, we still speak words, not numbers. No one can say "1," and no one can say "1,900,000." If we could speak numbers, we wouldn't have words that represent numbers.

Most would probably say something like "How much did they get away with?'

"A million nine and change."

or "How old are you?"

"Why, I'll be a hundred and twelve next Monday."

[zarch]

I basically always spell numbers in dialogue, but it can get awkward if the number is large. In academic writing, the rule is the spell anything that takes fewer than three words to spell. But like James said, you can't say a number.

I'll spell out ages and such...and if the number is really large, then I'll round it off to make it easier.

Thanks.

[alleycat]

I generally spell things out, but for things like ages and years I think using a number is acceptable (and maybe better). Just my opinion, I can't quote a rule for it for fiction.

ac

[Simon Woodhouse]

I was writing an article the other day that involved referring to events that happened in the previous decade, the Nineties. I then wanted to compare them to something that was happening now, but I had no idea how to write this current decade, the '00s, in word form. The best I could come up with was the Noughties (it was quite a light-hearted article so I thought this worked, Noughties being a play on the word naughty). The editor changed Nineties to '90s and Noughties to '00s.