Red flags started waving in my mind last week as I read a Time article about the CEO of The Cellular Connection, Scott Moorehead. This paragraph demonstrates one of my pet peeves regarding how to write numbers:
“In 2008, at age 30, Moorehead took over the company reins from his father. Since then revenue has grown 239%, from $137 to $466 mil.”
Logically, there had to be a problem with the math or the words. I doubt Moorehead’s parents handed over a company with revenues of only $137, and if he had increased that by 239%, the total revenues for the company’s 800 locations today would be only about $327.
An increase from $137 to $466 million would be an increase of more than 340 million percent.
I’m willing to be flexible about style choices in how to write numbers. I don’t care whether you spell out all numbers less than 100 or only those that are less than 10. While I’m not thrilled with the abbreviation of “million” in the paragraph above, I can live with that. I can even be flexible about how to apply style rules. (Our style is to use the percent sign, but 340 million % would be awful.)
I am a nitpicker, however, when it comes to dropping “million” or “billion” in the first number of a range. That changes the number.
Do you have a pet peeve about how to write numbers?
[Image Source: Luis Argerich]
Not to be a nitpicker, but shouldn’t that be “waving” and not “waiving”?
We appreciate nitpickers here. Thank you for pointing that out so I could correct it.
The First Commandment of Technical Writing is “Thou shalt not confuse thy reader.” Leaving off the first ‘million’ violated that commandment. My pet peeve with numbers is being inconsistent in how they are ordered. For example: He had 3 apples, 17 oranges, and 1 grape. It would be easier to comprehend if this information had been written as: He had 1 grape, 3 apples, and 17 oranges. Another example: Between 1960 and 1970, the crime rate grew to 2 murders per 100,000 citizens from 1 murder per 100,000 citizens. It would be easier to comprehend if this information had been written as: Between 1960 and 1970, the crime rate grew from 1 murder per 100,000 citizens to 2 murders per 100,000 citizens.
Good point!
My pet peeve is writing numbers in words and then putting the numerics in parentheses such as four hundred sixty-five (465). It is not “legal” and it makes the reading more difficult and what do you do when the words and numerics don’t agree? For one to ten, you can write words but anything higher, just use numerics. Writing will be simpler and no ambiguities.
I’m not aware of a style that would require writing the numbers both ways. It sounds like that’s an example of someone going too far in trying to be clear and causing confusion instead.
Would you ever think it’s all right to mix written and numerical numbers? For example: “It took three men over 40 minutes to cut down that tree.” By AP standards, you don’t use the word for anything over ten.
Another question, this one concerning starting a sentence with a number. If the number is large and awkward to write out (i.e., three hundred sixty-seven million five hundred thousand–367,500,000), would you resort to starting with the actual number or reword the sentence so you don’t start with the number?
I like the guidance from The Chicago Manual of Style, which says at the beginning of its chapter on numbers “Consistency must sometimes give way to readability.” Later it says to be consistent with how you write numbers in the immediate context. For example, if you would write a numeral for one number, you would write a numeral for all the numbers in that same category within a paragraph or series of paragraphs.
I avoid starting a sentence with a number.
Actually the calculation of 239% is correct. To calculate the percent growth take the current amount minus the base amount and then divide by the base amount (239% = (466,000,000-137,000,000)/137,000,000). Perhaps you are calculating the difference, which equates to $329 million. The revenue would need to increase to $466 trillion to get to $340 million percent as you describe.
I appreciate your taking the time to write out the calculation. I don’t disagree with that math, but the article said “137,” not “137 million.” If you do the calculation with 137, you get a much different result. My point is that it’s important to not leave off a word like “million” when writing numbers.