Phouka said:
I still wouldn't spell out 'six thousand, two-hundred and forty three' in dialog -- I'd write 6,243. It's what I would expect to see. I thought the rule was spell out anything under a hundred (and then also spell out the milestone numbers, like one thousand, four million).
Writing large numbers as text is really awkward to me, and always jars me out of a narrative or piece of dialog. For the time example, I agree it should be "ten" in all cases (being less than one hundred) but eventually the spelled-out versions become cumbersome and detriment to understanding.
It's your writing, but it's physically impossible for anyone to speak a number. It can't be done. And it's seldom realistic if you write it either way in dialogue. I don't care if the number is ten million, when you have a character speak a number, you've just done the impossible, and that's far more jarring to most reading than anything else. It would make me stop reading a writer instantly, and never again pick up a book of his. And as an editor, I'd correct it, or that writer wouldn't sell me a story.
With large numbers, real people generally take shortcuts. If a bank has 6,243 dollars stolen, most people are going to say something like "A bit over six thousand." Or, "Six thousand and change."
But if it comes down to it, there's never been a person who lived that could say "We had 6,243 dollars taken."
If you expect to see numbers come out of a person's mouth, you meet different people than I do, and dialogue is coming out of a person's mouth. Or should be. When you write "6,243" it isn't coming out of that character's mouth, it's coming straight from you.
When a character is speaking, he should be speaking. The writer should never butt in and show the reader his writing. This is author intrusion, and it instantly switches the reader from something a character is
saying to something the writer is
writing.
It doesn't take much to jolt a reader out of a scene, and having a character do the impossible will cause this to happen instantly.
And you wouldn't have a character say "10,000,000" would you? Isn't it a heck of a lot easier to have him say "ten million."
How large the number is has nothing to do with it. You're the writer, and if you think the number is cumbersome, then change it. But don't have a character do something that's absolutely impossible, and don't butt in on his speech.
When a character wants to say something, then let him
talk. If you start writing instead of letting him talk, then you've failed the reader. Numbers can be written, but they can never, ever be spoken. It's completely impossible.