American and British English differences

Numbers

When saying or writing out numbers, the British will insert an "and" before the tens and units, as in "one hundred and sixty-two" and "two thousand and three", whereas Americans will typically drop the "and" as in "two thousand three"; however, "two thousand and three" is also common. Americans are more likely than the British to read numbers like 1,234 as "twelve thirty-four", instead of "one thousand, two hundred and thirty-four" unless discussing the year 1234, when "twelve thirty-four" would be the norm. Similarly, for the house number (or bus number, etc) "272" Britons would tend to say "two seven two" while Americans would tend to say "two seventy-two". Between 1100 and 1900 the British commonly read numbers ending in round hundreds as, for instance, "sixteen hundred" instead of "one thousand six hundred", but from 2000 upwards usage like "thirty-two hundred" would be replaced by "three thousand two hundred".

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There was also a historical difference between billions, trillions, and so forth. Americans use "billion" to mean one thousand million (1,000,000,000), whereas in Britain, until the latter part of the 20th century, it was almost exclusively used to mean one million million (1,000,000,000,000), with one thousand million sometimes described as a "milliard", the definition adopted by most other European languages. However, the "American English" version has since been adopted for all published writing, and the word "milliard" is obsolete in English, as are billiard (but not billiards), trilliard and so on.

Related Topics:
Billion - Trillion - Milliard - Billiards

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Nevertheless, the majority of people have no direct experience with manipulating numbers this large, so a significant proportion of international readers will interpret "billion" as 1012, even if they are young enough to have been taught otherwise at school. For this reason, defining the word may be advisable when writing for the general public. However, all major British publications and broadcasters, including the BBC, which long used "thousand million" to avoid ambiguity, now use "billion" to mean thousand million.

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See long and short scales for a more detailed discussion of the evolution of these terms in English and other languages.

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Finally, when referring to the numeral 0, Britons would use "zero", "nought", or "oh" normally, or "nil" in instances such as sports scores and voting results. Americans use the term "zero" most frequently; "oh" is also often used, and occasionally slang terms such as "zilch" or "zip". Phrases such as "the team won two-zip" or "the team leads the series, two-nothing" are heard when reporting sports scores. The digit 0, for example, when reading a phone or account number aloud, is nearly always pronounced "oh" in both languages for the sake of convenience.

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When reading numbers in a sequence, such as a telephone or serial number, Britons will use the terms double or triple/treble. Hence 007 is "double oh seven". Exceptions are the emergency telephone number 999, which is always "nine nine nine" and the apocalyptic "number of the beast" which is always "six six six". Some Americans will say "six six six" for the number of the beast. In the US, 911 (the US emergency telephone number) is almost always read "nine-one-one", while 9-11 (September 11, 2001) is usually read "nine-eleven".

Related Topics:
999 - Number of the beast - September 11, 2001

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See also: How to name numbers in English

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