cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/21049862

The only numbers I will ever spell are one and zero, and only when using them as a pronoun, or for emphasis, respectively.

Is there ever a reason to not to use symbols when dealing with numbers? Why would “fourteen whatevers” ever be preferable to “14 whatevers”. It’s just so much easier to read numbers as symbols, not spelled out.

(Caveat, not including multipliers, like “273 billion”).

  • tiramichu@lemm.eeEnglish
    592·
    5 months ago

    Context is everything, IMO.

    In engineering work, numbers should always be digits. In prose, numbers should be spelled out.

    Breakfast at the Thompson’s was a busy affair; 12 eggs and 6 rounds of toast for their 3 sets of boistrous twins.

    Compared to

    Breakfast at the Thompson’s was a busy affair; twelve eggs and six rounds of toast for their three sets of boistrous twins.

    To me it’s pretty clear which of those reads better and more naturally as prose; digits really ‘jump out’ on the page, and while that is great for engineering texts, it is incongruent and distracting for prose.

    • MisterFrog@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      5·
      5 months ago

      Yeah that’s fair. I personally prefer the first one, but I can see how it makes sense to not use digits there.

      +1 ∆ for you (change my view points, a thing from r/changemyview)

    • Sc00ter@lemm.eeEnglish
      52·
      5 months ago

      In your example tho, you want those numbers to stand out. The reason the affair was busy, was because of the numbers. You want the numbers to jump out, because that’s the important detail.

      • tiramichu@lemm.eeEnglish
        8·
        5 months ago

        I appreciate your point, but I still believe spelled-out numbers work better.

        In prose, especially fiction writing, the ideal case is that the words themselves slide neatly out of the way and become invisible, leaving only a picture in the reader’s mind. Generally speaking, anything distracting is therefore counter-productive for fiction. Strange fonts and strange typesetting, while interesting, take the reader out of the prose. There’s a reason almost every fiction book you pick up from the shelf uses Garamond.

        In an engineering context, remembering exactly “12 eggs, 6 toast” is probably the most important thing, and numeric digits assist in that. In fiction however it doesn’t matter if, by the next page, the reader has forgotten exactly how many eggs there were; the important aspect is to convey the sense of a large and chaotic family, and the overall impression is more important than the detail.

        Thats why although the numbers are important for setting the scene, we really don’t want them to jump out and steal attention. We don’t want anything at all to have undue prominence, because the reader needs to process the paragraph as a cohesive whole, and see the scene, not the specific numbers.