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”).

  • jetAEnglish
    31·
    2 months ago

    You’re in an engineering community, is ten-one actually wrong?

    Consider the sequence: One, eleven, twenty-one, thirty-one, fourty-one, fifty-one… One hundred and one.

    As far as the convention of writing numbers out in words when they’re less than 10, there’s also conventions for less than 15, wikimedia uses the convention if it can be written in two words it’s optional to write it out as words.

    • Fleur_@lemm.eeEnglish
      31·
      2 months ago

      You’re right but in the specific context the meme addresses I would still argue against you. Perhaps in this hypothetical the reasoning for the convention was irrelevant to whether 11 can be written as eleven or ten-one. Ultimately it doesn’t matter, we are in an engineering community, on a post about numbers less than ten and you’re arguing with me about ten-one being more situationally valid than eleven when we both agree that 11 is just better.