Any writers on here? (stuck on a point of style)

Great minds think alike 🙂

Re 18

Trumper

Don’t steal my thunder! I wanted to write that !

I’ll ask my school’s Head of English, with whom I share an office, what she thinks when she arrives later.

So when she responds with ” yeah,wot u want ,innit ” 🙂 you know you are onto a winner 🙂

Good luck ,it will be interesting to see what her take is on it.

Henry V111,Henry the eighth,or Henry the 8th 🙂

I’ll ask my school’s Head of English, with whom I share an office, what she thinks when she arrives later.

Not a writer either but you can be sure that anything you do ever get published will be criticised in one way or another.

Regards,

kev35

http://www.grammarbook.com/numbers/numbers.asp

Moggy

Thanks for the replies, folks; never imagined there would be so much interest. Can I just say “She was 26” was a purely hypothetical example to simply illustrate the point I was trying to make, and not an actual line from my book. I decided to change to numerals because there is one scene (an argument over someone’s age and the events in their life) where the unavoidable amount of hyphenated words (eg “Twenty-Six”) in such a short passage looked very untidy and clumsy.
Not sure I can really look to Shakespeare for guidance either, because of course language and styles have changed over the years; he may never have written “26” but then again I’d never write “Wherefore art thou?”
I think sticking rigidly to either all words or all numerals is likely to bring problems of its own, and the answer is to use your own feeling for what is ‘right’ whilst trying to remain as consistent as possible.

“The two of them caught a number 43 bus down the Seven Sisters Road, ending up eventually at North Weald airfield where a Cessna 172 was lining up on runway two-eight”

Moggy

Absolutely.The number as a quantity could be written with numbers,the number as a specific reference of type,location could be written grammatically .

“Eventually you would use your own feeling for what was ‘right’ and end up with”….seems to sum up the answer to the OP’s question.

Trying to get in on the back of Fifty Shades of Grey thing, eh?;o)

Wouldn’t worry too much; the proof reader would hi-light any problems and the style editor (or whatever they are called) is paid to make that sort of decision. On the other hand if you are trying to publish it yourself…

In the example you gave, you actually used the “‘Less then ten in figures, more than ten in numerals” rule and it seems to work. However if the wrting is to be factually accurate e.g. then you would need to pay attention to the details. If the street is called “Seven Sisters Road” then “7 Sisters” would be wrong. Calling it a Cessna One seven two would also be factually wrong as the type designation is Cessna 172. So as well as flow, accuracy helps a great deal too.
A quick peruse of some novels on the shelf show that there the use of small numbers as words , less than ten or maybe less than a hundred seems to be common.
117-year old would appear to be used rather than one hundred and seventeen year old but twenty six year old would be more common than 26-year old.
Ther are exceptions to all rules so it would be better to say there are seven 3-year olds rather than 7 3-year olds or the rather more clumsy seven three-year olds.

It would be utterly ridiculously to write out five hundred and twenty six thousand, three hundred and eight when 526,308 is easier to write and more importantly to understand.

But remember here the original question was about fiction.

There would be no reason I can think of to include that figure in a work of fiction as all facts and figures are totally under the control of the author. Assuming it was a story about a lottery win, then describing it as “just over half a million pounds” will get the meaning over better than the exact sum.

If I really had to include a figure of that precision for some obscure plot point then

She glanced down quickly at the cheque that she was now holding in her ever-so-slightly trembling hand.

£526,308

The figures danced before her eyes, she felt suddenly faint

It is about flow when writing a novel, there are no absolute rights and wrongs as again the author controls the style. So some arbritary rule like ‘Less then ten in figures, more than ten in numerals’ doesn’t work

“The 2 of them caught a number 43 bus down the 7 Sisters Road, ending up eventually at North Weald airfield where a Cessna 172 was lining up on runway 28”

works no better than

“The two of them caught a number forty-three bus down the Seven Sisters Road, ending up eventually at North Weald airfield where a Cessna One Seven Two was lining up on runway two-eight”

Eventually you would use your own feeling for what was ‘right’ and end up with

“The two of them caught a number 43 bus down the Seven Sisters Road, ending up eventually at North Weald airfield where a Cessna 172 was lining up on runway two-eight”

Moggy

DITTO, DITTO, DITTO. Check out past great authors. Shakespeare, Dickens etc. Can’t ever recall seeing numbers in their scribblings, er scribeings.

With no disrespect to the OP are we in classic author territory here? I certainly wouldn’t use “scribblings” to describe their work.
But I take RpR’s aesthetic point.

My major was creative writing.

I do not know the context of the subject but “the twenty-six year old (girl or woman as context fits) …” or ” the girl was twenty-six…” is a smoother transition than “she was 26”.

She was 26 — sounds more like part of a list.
When writing fiction, flow is very important.

In modern writing however it seems to be accepted to write out numbers less than 10 as words but greater than 10 as numerals. It would be utterly ridiculously to write out five hundred and twenty six thousand, three hundred and eight when 526,308 is easier to write and more importantly to understand. I write as part of my job and very rarely write out numbers as words.

I write for a living. I would never dream of writing “She was 26”

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Moggy

DITTO, DITTO, DITTO. Check out past great authors. Shakespeare, Dickens etc. Can’t ever recall seeing numbers in their scribblings, er scribeings.

I write for a living. I would never dream of writing “She was 26”

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Moggy

I don’t write professionally but I write and I read a great deal. My sense would be numerals for specific numbers and letters for general unspecific amounts or numbers, as in your example.

Not a writer, but I have an English Literature A Level , I think It’s perfectly acceptable to mix according to what is easier on the eye.