Grammar: Word classes: Number words

Specifying quantity

Cardinal numbers

There are two problems learners and native speakers alike have with cardinal numbers: spelling, especially of large numbers, and differences between British and American usage with certain very large numbers. 

Cardinal numbers
number	spelling & pronunciation	number	spelling & pronunciation
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23	one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty twenty-one twenty-two twenty-three	30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 101 102 103 121 200 334 1,000 1,101 1,121 10,000 100,000 1,000,000 1,234,753	thirty forty fifty sixty seventy eighty ninety one hundred one hundred and one one hundred and two one hundred and three one hundred and twenty-one two hundred three hundred and thirty-four one thousand one thousand, one hundred and one one thousand, one hundred and twenty-one ten thousand one hundred thousand one million one million, two hundred and thirty-four thousand, seven hundred and fifty-three

	In numbers of one thousand and greater, we occasionally use spaces instead of commas, eg 1 000 or 1 234 753.
	In large numbers starting with one (one thousand), we can use the indefinite article a instead of one, ie a thousand.
	Thousands may be spoken as hundreds, eg 1,100 = eleven hundred instead of one thousand one hundred.

For a teaching activity with numbers, see Text types: Texts for fun & leisure: Songs