Number to words in American or British English
This number to words converter writes numbers out in full English, the way you would say them or write them on a legal document. It handles negative values, decimals and very large numbers, and it can format the result as a dollar amount or in the style commonly used on cheques.
Example
1234567.89
one million two hundred thirty-four thousand five hundred
sixty-seven point eight nine
-42 minus forty-two
1000000000000 one trillionCompound numbers from 21 to 99 get a hyphen (sixty-seven), and digits after the decimal point are read one at a time (point eight nine).
American vs British wording
The difference is the word "and". American usage leaves it out; British usage puts it after "hundred" and before a final group below one hundred.
| Number | American | British |
|---|---|---|
| 101 | one hundred one | one hundred and one |
| 2005 | two thousand five | two thousand and five |
| 1000001 | one million one | one million and one |
Both styles use the short scale, where a billion is a thousand million (10^9) and a trillion is 10^12.
The three styles
- Plain: the number as words, with "point" for decimals.
- Currency: adds dollars and cents. 1234567.89 becomes "one million two hundred thirty-four thousand five hundred sixty-seven dollars and eighty-nine cents", and 0.5 becomes "zero dollars and fifty cents".
- Cheque: removes hyphens and appends "only", a convention that makes it harder to add words after the amount. 1250 in title case becomes "One Thousand Two Hundred Fifty Only". Decimals are still read digit by digit, so for an amount with cents use currency style or write the cents separately, for example as 56/100.
Letter case
Choose lower case, Sentence case (first letter capitalized), Title Case or UPPER CASE. Upper case is common on printed cheques and contracts, while sentence case suits a number at the start of a sentence.
Limits and input rules
- Up to 36 digits before the decimal point, which reaches the decillions (10^33). Larger values produce an error.
- Commas, spaces and underscores inside a number are ignored, so 1,250 works.
- Currency symbols, letters and scientific notation such as 1e6 are rejected; type the plain digits.
- In currency style, give amounts with at most two decimal places.
When writing numbers as words helps
Style guides often ask you to spell out small numbers and numbers that start a sentence. Invoices, contracts and cheques repeat amounts in words so that a changed digit is easy to detect. Accessibility and text-to-speech work sometimes needs the spoken form, too.
To go the other way, use the words to number converter. For historical or formal numbering, the Roman numeral converter covers 1 to 3999, and the word counter helps if the result must fit a length limit.