Why write it out
A written number can be spoken many ways. 1999 is "nineteen ninety-nine" as a year and "one
thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine" as a price. 3/4 is "three quarters", "March fourth" or "the
third of April". A person reading the script uses context; a voice model sometimes does, and sometimes doesn't.
Writing the words removes the guess, so every take says the same thing.
It also matters for the automatic check. Every take is listened back to with speech recognition and compared with the line's text, and a take that seems to have skipped words is made again. Spelled-out words give it a clear target.
Before and after
| Kind | Instead of | Write |
|---|---|---|
| Years | 1999, 2026 | nineteen ninety-nine, twenty twenty-six |
| Dates | 3/4/26 | March fourth, or the third of April |
| Times | 9:30am, 18:00 | nine thirty in the morning, six p.m. |
| Money | $4.99, €1.2m | four ninety-nine, one point two million euros |
| Percentages | 40% | forty percent |
| Big numbers | 1,250,000 | one and a quarter million |
| Phone numbers | 0800 123 456 | oh eight hundred, one two three, four five six |
| Ordinals | 21st | twenty-first |
| Units | 5km, 12°C, 3x | five kilometres, twelve degrees, three times |
| Symbols | &, +, #, / | and, plus, number or hashtag, slash or "or" |
| Abbreviations | e.g., etc., approx. | for example, and so on, about |
| Titles | Dr., St. | Doctor, Saint or Street |
| Acronyms said as letters | FAQ, BBC | F-A-Q, B-B-C |
| Acronyms said as words | NASA, scuba | NASA (check it), scuba |
| Web addresses | example.com/help | example dot com slash help |
| Versions | v2.1 | version two point one |
Acronyms and capitals
The voice model reads the text in lower case, so capital letters don't tell it to spell a word out:
NASA and nasa look the same to it, and so do US and us. For an
acronym said letter by letter, separate the letters with hyphens (U-S, F-A-Q). For
one said as a word, write it as usual and listen to the first take. Capitals don't add emphasis either; to
stress a word, rephrase so it falls at the end of the sentence.
Lists, scores and ranges
- Ranges:
5-10 minutesbecomesfive to ten minutes. - Scores and ratios:
3-1or16:9becomethree oneorsixteen by nine. A colon is read as a short pause, so16:9left as it is sounds like "sixteen, nine". - Bullet lists: turn them into a sentence, or give each item its own line.
Other languages
Numbers are where languages differ most: German says the units first (einundzwanzig), French
counts in twenties above sixty (quatre-vingt-dix), and Korean has two number systems. The
language pages have tips for each of the 23 languages.
Keep a style sheet
For a long project, note how you've written each recurring number, product name and acronym, and stick to it. That keeps a course or series consistent, and saves deciding again for every script. For words that come out wrong even when written plainly, see fixing mispronunciations.