Saying Dates & Numbers
How To Say Dates & Numbers In English?
Number of people commit serious mistakes while saying dates and numbers in spoken English. In normal situations no body bothers because they are ignorant themselves. However if you say numbers and dates incorrectly in the company of native speakers they may carry a wrong impression about you.
Keep following points in mind while telling dates and numbers:
Dates & Months
You must have heard people telling dates and months as ‘one March, twenty three April’ etc. This is a totally wrong way. You always put ‘1st ,2nd , th’ while telling dates, as ‘first March, second May, third, fourth, fifth etc’
Now if you have to tell a month with the date you can do it in two ways:
1. Say date before the month as 21st March (twenty first March), 18th May
(eighteenth May) etc.
2. Say month before date as, March 21st (March twenty first), November 30th
(November thirtieth) etc.
Years
Years are always expressed in numbers separated by word ‘and’ a slight space. For example 2010 is told as ‘two thousand and ten’, 1985 as nineteen eighty-five, 2009 as ‘two thousand and nine’ etc.
Fractions/Ratios/Percentage
Fractions like ½ is expressed as ‘one half’, 1/3 as ‘one third’, ¼ as ‘one quarter’ , 1/5 as ‘one fifth’ etc.
18% is expressed as ‘eighteen percent’, 9.5% as ‘nine point five percent’, 0.8% as ‘zero point eight’ or ‘point eight percent’ etc.
Telephone & Mobile Numbers
Telephone/mobile numbers should be expressed in such a manner that they get easy to listen and remember as 5543528 is expressed ads ‘double five four three---five two eight’. See you had made two packets of a telephone number which got easier to remember. So always separate the number with a pause.
Similarly mobile phone number 0300-5312982 is expressed as ‘ zero three hundred--five three one--two nine-- eight two. Sometimes you need to pause at three places for others to easily note or remember your telephone numbers.