Numbers in English. I’ve been speaking Spanish for almost 20 years and I still do math in English. But, it is really important to know how to say and write large numbers. One zero can make a complete difference.
HOW TO SAY LARGE NUMBERS IN ENGLISH
0,50 – fifty cents
561.00 – five hundred sixty-one. (British English: five hunder and sixty one)
2,000.00 – two thousand
972,000.00 – nine hundred seventy-two thousand (British English: nine hundred and seventy-two thousand)
9,000,000.00 – nine million
289,000,000.00 – two hundred eighty-nine million (British English: two hundred and eighty nine million
3,000,000,000.00 – three billion
COMMON MISTAKES
DECIMAL POINT
Use commas to separate a set of three numbers.
A decimal point is used to separate the dollars and the cents.
32,001
thirty-two thousand and one
32.001
thirty-two point oh oh one
DOLLARS AND CENTS
Say dollars before saying the cents or else it can be confusing.
$65,300.06
sixty-five thousand, three hundred dollars and six cents
$65,306.00
sixty-five thousand, three hundred and 6 dollars
SINGULAR AND PLURAL
we don’t say millions with a specific amount.
400,000.00€
four hundred thousand euros
four hundred thousands euros
use an ‘s’ to talk about less specific amounts of money
when it is a specific number, use a before the number and no ‘s’ on the amount.
Millions of euros are spent every year on street cleaning.
a million euros are spent everyear on street cleaning.
Hundreds of billions of dollars are made by pharaceutical companies every month.
a hundred billion dollars are made by pharmaceutical companies every month.