Hi guys I am writing a biography and I am stumped as to which is the best way to write dates and numbers. I am hoping you can help: Here are two examples from my manuscript The first is the way I have been writing dates throughout the whole book "The family stayed in the property for twenty two years and in nineteen ninety six Marlene sold it to the .... Here is the other way I could have written it: The family stayed in the property for twenty two years and in 1996 Marlene sold it to the .... Am I right in thinking that numbers on their own should always be written longhand. For example in the sentence above 22 years should be written longhand and not as numbers. I know I am asking a lot but it'd be good to find out now so that I don't have to review the whole thing to change all the dates after it's written. thank you in advance Vikki
Well, it's a matter of style, just make sure you stay consistent throughout. If you are going to write twenty-two, don't forget the hyphen. The general rule is to write out number one through nine, and use numerals for 10 through whatever. Unless you have multiple numbers in the same sentence. "She ran 1 lap every 12 minutes." I would write out the date in numerals, because if you're writing a biography, you're going to use a lot of dates and writing out 'the twenty-seventh of January, two-thousand and thirteen' is going to get old very fast. Good luck! ~ J. J.
Well, I don't have much experience in this area, but I would write it, "twenty-two years". And I would write the year as "1996".
Thank you guys that is the best advice and JJ yes you are right there will be quite a few dates in the book!
I have been on it for almost a year and have set myself a goal of May 17th but I think I might need longer xx I will let you know once it is done
