Re: USAGE: Well, at least he created numbers.....

On Wed, 23 Jan 2002, Muke Tever wrote:

> From: "John Cowan" <jcowan@...>
> > Clint Jackson Baker wrote:
> >
> > > Then how would the Englishman, Australian, Nigerian,
> > > et al say those numbers?  I don't know of any
> > > distinction among English speakers, except that some
> > > use "and" to separate the tens and ones from
> > > everything else, eg "five hundred and thirty two",
> > > "four thousand and nine".  Is this what you mean?
> >
> >
> > Just so, and I should have said as much.  I think
> > it was around 1950 when the "one hundred twenty three"
> > style, without the traditional "and", became commonly
> > taught in North America.
Do you know why they decided to replace convention with something unusual?

> Well, when I was in school, I was taught that "and" goes for the decimal point:
> four thousand and nine [tenths].
I say point for the decimal point or and before a fraction:
 'four thousand point nine'; 'four thousand and nine tenths'.

This sounds quite dangerous, if we can't all agree on how to use
numbers...

Tristan