Number to words

Type a number, with or without commas, and it's written out in words straight away. Numbers up to the hundreds of trillions work, with up to six decimal places, and negative numbers too. A $ or £ in front is fine.

Under the answer you'll find the decimal read the way schools teach it, the wording for a US check and a UK cheque, and the ordinal, like one hundred twelfth. Choose which goes in the main box with Write as, and choose American or British English, which differ over one small word.

On a US check, the usual wording is the dollars in words, then and, then the cents as a fraction of 100. $1,234.56 is One thousand two hundred thirty-four and 56/100 dollars. Even with no cents, write and 00/100, and draw a line through the space left over, so nothing can be added.

On a UK cheque, the pounds are usually in words and the pence in figures. £1,234.56 is One thousand two hundred and thirty-four pounds and 56p. With no pence, write only after the pounds, as in Fifty pounds only. Banks go by the amount in words if it doesn't match the figures, so it's worth getting right.

Split the number into groups of three digits from the right, the way the commas do. Each group is read as a number under 1,000, followed by its scale word, thousand, million, billion or trillion. 4,302,015 is four million, three hundred two thousand, fifteen. A group of three zeros is skipped completely.

Hyphenate the numbers from twenty-one to ninety-nine, as in forty-two. Don't use and in American English except where a decimal point would go. In British English, and goes before the last part under 100, so 105 is one hundred and five and 1,005 is one thousand and five.

There are two ways to read a decimal. The everyday way says point and reads the digits one at a time, so 3.25 is three point two five. In school, and on cheques, the decimal is read as a fraction, so 3.25 is three and twenty-five hundredths. The last digit's place gives the name, such as hundredths or thousandths.