Numbers in English Writing

Page 5. Page 6. Hi, James here. See these things on the paper here? They are numbers.

So what's so important about numbers when we're talking about English? Well, as a lot

of students get confused, a little fact here. When do you write out a number? Because sometimes

we write them out, and sometimes we actually write the number. Now I'm going to give you

one simple rule. So today, I'm going to put this on the board. Ready? Magic. Today's lesson,

I'm going to pretend to be a professional, okay? Don't laugh. I'm going to try. I may

fall down. Okay, so let me see. First mistake, I used the wrong pen. Today's lesson will

be on numbers. I'm hoping I have some hippy fans here. Today's lesson. See, I'm trying

to be professional. Today's lesson will be on numbers. Okay, we've got numbers, oh sorry,

numbers or numbers. Now, when do you write the number? 687. And when do you write the

number? 687. When do we write the numbers? Well, I'm going to give you today, say, in

the lesson. You like that voice after everything I do? In the lesson, today, you will learn.

It's not even going to get irritating, okay? You will learn, boom, magic. The rule of ten.

Number two, you'll learn three uses of the rule. By the way, I just broke the rule of

ten. When we're done the lesson, I want you to figure out where I broke the rule of ten,

because I broke it twice. By the end of this lesson, you'll know what I did wrong. Cool?

Let's get started. So, in reality, we're going to be teaching you, or I'm going to be teaching

you today, about writing numbers out in their numerical form. This is called numerical as

in number form, or writing them out literally, in their literal form. Now, there's a rule

of ten, a simple rule of ten. This should be able to help you. So what is the rule of

ten? The rule of ten is this. It's going to sound like math in a second there. If a number

is less than ten, oops, watch now, I won't break it, ten, or, here we go, don't get scared.

Yeah, see? Okay, it's a simple rule. The rule of ten. If a number is less than ten, or divisible

by ten, then write, oops, it out. Okay? Write it out. So you notice I put ten. Ten. Ten

is divisible by ten. Alright? What's an example you're saying? James, because I'm not inclined

for math, and here you're trying to teach me math. I came for English, please. One subject

at a time. I agree. I don't know what name I should give you. Ezekiel Junior. Okay, here's

an example. Do you remember when I said I was going to give you three examples? I made

a mistake. I said I will write out three examples. Well, this would be poor English. Well, I

should have said three examples. Why is this correct? Because it's less than ten. See?

So if you have a number situation where it's less than ten, you should write it out. Or

if it's divisible by. So another example would be, sixty people came to the party. Okay?

So let me just use my little handy dandy brush here. Change this one. Okay? So here we have

sixty people came to the party. If they came to the party, they would all be dead. They'd

be running and die. They're the part of the land, see? Joke part. Okay, they came to the

party. So sixty people came to the party, not six zero. That would be wrong. Three examples.

Three examples. This is the correct one. Why? It's less than ten, and this is divisible

by ten. Ten goes into this six times. Cool? Great. So that's basically the rule of ten.

Now, please keep in mind this. When we're talking about the rule of ten here, you have

to remember what you're writing for. Because if you're writing for a university, or a magazine,

or personal writing, or business writing, sometimes the rules change a little bit. So

please be aware of that. This rule is a general rule to be used, and you'll usually be right.

Okay? Now, there are going to be several instances. I'm only giving you three of approximately

eight to ten different rules. For scholarly writing, or school writing, the rules that

we use to indicate a person, like a person like Louis the Fourteenth, okay? Or, you know,

the twentieth century. Different ways of writing these things. So please keep that in mind.

You might have to check. But usually you're lucky. You'll go to school and they'll give

you a book that will tell you the rules for writing for that school. But really, this

is generally, will be correct. Okay? Generally. Cool? Good. Now we can go back to the lesson.

So that's the rule of ten. We got that? Great. So, remember at the end of the lesson I said

I made two mistakes? I just told you one. Yeah? And two. See if you can remember them.

Okay? So this is generally the rule of ten. Now, what do we want to talk about after that?

Well, I'm going to call this ROW. ROWA. Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily. Michael's just a dream. Oops. Sorry. That was in bad

taste. Okay. So, as I said, we're going to do ROWA. Okay? ROWA. So here's three general

rules that will help you remember. One, R stands for, let me do it in red so we can

see together, rounded numbers. Okay? O stands for ordinal. And A stands for age. Okay? So

let's do a quick overview of each one. So we're going to start off with rounded numbers.

I've got them all up here. So, let's do rounded numbers. Now, with rounded numbers, they're

an approximation, really. A rounded number is an approximation. Alright? So because it's

an approximation, what we want to do is spell it out. So right now we're going to use two

terms, either numerically right, which means the number, or spell it out. Okay? So in this

case, with approximations, we spell it out. So if there were 60, alright, 60,000 people

at the party, okay, then we actually have to write out 60,000. And we actually have

to write out 60,000 people. Okay? Okay? So we've got an approximate, so we say 60,000

people. Okay? Now, if we have really large numbers, and when I say really large numbers,

we're talking about in the millions, or the billions, then what happens here is we're

actually going to do a mixture. We're going to put something like this, 3.5 million, or

billion. So what that means is we have a mixture of numerics, which is numbers, plus spelling

it out. Okay? So when you deal with high, high numbers, you do this, you do a mixture.

So this is for rounded numbers, or approximate numbers. For cases where you have crowds,

or large movements, or concerts, you don't know if there's really 6,741 people. So you

just round it up. So you round it up, you can say 60,000, because it's an approximate,

everybody knows. It could be more or less, it doesn't matter. But when we get to the

millions and billions, we usually do a mixture. Numerically written, and then we spell it

out. Okay? So that's rounded numbers. What was the other one I said now? Well, roll up,

so he's going to have to go, oh, oh, that beautiful number, ordinal. Now, with ordinal

numbers, it's a little bit different. The ordinal numbers are nice and easy, because

it follows the rule of 10. So this one here, we've got ordinal numbers. Now what do we

mean by that? The rule of 10, nice red letters. What do we mean by that? Well, what we mean

by that is this. If you have first, second, third, or fourth, generally, you're going

to write them down, right? So you're going to put down, you'll actually put down first

or second. Okay? You won't write them down like this, you won't do this. That's wrong,

that's bad. Okay? So you should do it like this. Now, once again though, but if we say

the 47th, okay, the 47th, it follows the rule of 10, so we say 47th president. Okay? More

like this. So it follows the rule of 10, first and second, third, fourth, fifth, like this.

Okay? Otherwise we do this and we add the last little th. Now reminding me, ordinal

numbers, just so you know what the notation is, is this. Okay? Now, for number 1, we have

s, t. Number 2, n, d. Number 3, r, d. And number 4, t, h. Some places, however, do note

it as just a pure d. Okay? We'll put second and third with just a d, but usually second,

third, fourth, fifth, and sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and, you know, the rest of

these are, right? So first, second, that's how we usually note it. Okay? There's your

notation, and there's your ordinal numbers. It basically follows the rule of 10. Now,

the last one I want to do is the most common one, and you saw that on the board. That'll

be ages. How old are you? Okay? Age. Okay? So when it comes to age, we usually write

out the exact number. We write it out, or spell out the number. Okay? So we spell out

the exact numbers. I'm 27, 32, 41, 59. Guess how old I am? I'm older than a fart, but younger

than your father, if your father is 100. That's all I'm going to say. Okay. So we spell it

out. If we're talking exact numbers, how old is your kid? He's 7. All right? My child

is 7. Okay? Now, if it's an approximate number, here's, you get really lucky. If it's an

approximate age, like, let's say, Ezekiel, or Mr. E, you'll see him later, is approximately,

this means for approximate, approximately 20. Or you can say, 20. So when we're doing

approximate ages, you can either use the number, numerical value, or you can actually spell

it out. Okay? So you can say he's 20 or 20, when it's an approximate age. When it's

exact age, we usually spell it. So, there we go. I tried to be professional today, and

I wrote out for you the what you would learn, and everything you would learn in math, so

your rule of 10, plus going through each and every one of them. You notice I fulfilled

my vow. This is the first and last time I'll be professional, because quite frankly, it's

boring. I like just being spontaneous. If you don't know what that word means, go to

the website, look at the vocabulary, look for the word spontaneous. See if you can find

it, okay? So, I hope you enjoyed it. We learned the rule of 10. What is the rule of 10, boys

and girls? Ah, ah, ah, two minutes, come on, figure it out, what is it? Yeah, I was trying

to remember. Rule of 10, it's easy, come on. Here's a big 10. What did we say? Under 10,

write it out. That's my Arnold Schwarzenegger, you like that? Over 10. If it's over 10, then

that's not Arnold, it sounds like a Jamaican Arnold. I don't know. If it's over 10, use

numbers. You like that? See, look at that, yin and yang, baby. Yin and yang, baby. See,

look, got your little religion in there. Got you, you like it? Alright, I gotta go. So

anyway, we got our little yin and yang symbol, we've got our, yeah, there we go, let's make

it up. We've got our numbers, so we remember the rule, rule of 10. Above 10, what do we

do? Write out numbers. 647, whatever, right, you're gonna write out numbers. Under 10,

write it out. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, right? Now, if it's R, remember, a rounded number,

an approximate number for a larger group, what we're gonna do is we're actually gonna

write out the, right, spell it out. Spell out the number. 60,000, 90,000. If we're

talking about ordinal numbers, under 10 follows the rule of 10, rule of 10, remember? Write

it out above that, then we're gonna actually do it numerically. And then finally, for ages,

we like to do the exactly, so we wanna write it out, spell it out, right? And if it's approximate,

you have the choice of either doing the numerical value or the number, or to write it out. Cool?

Well, hope you've enjoyed this lesson, this lovely lesson, okay? See, it was so professional,

Mr. E didn't make an appearance. I bet you missed Mr. E. He played on words, Mr. E, Mr.

E, 'cause if he was here, he would say, "Dumbass, if you wanna teach 'em any more, send them

to," where? www.boomboom. This is a tribute to Elvis now. www.boomboom. I'm going to

www.engvid.com. I'm going to www.engvid.com. Thank you, thank you very much. See you next time.