This fact was posted on a trivia site and I cannot work this sequence out

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Starting with the number one, you would have to count to one thousand to use the letter "A".

Is it because all the Preceding Numbers if spelt do not have an "a" and Thousand contains an "A" therefore the next 2 Numbers in the Sequence are Million and Billion?(Both "A"less)

But people say "one hundred and one..."

Is "one hundred one" common?

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Originally posted by newnickname:
But people say "one hundred and one..."

Is "one hundred one" common?

I agree with you I say it that way.Written down I'd write one Hundred zero(or Nought) one and so on. Placing an "and" doesn't look right...

This is a fairly standard question in Trivia contests. One Thousand is the correct answer. Remember, you are asked for the first time the letter A appears when one writes the number in English, not when one says the words. The standard spelling for numbers does not include the word "and". Perhaps it did at one time; Some people still count "one and twenty" for the number most say as "twenty-one".

The question in Bedstor's example was poorly worded. Some regional dialects use the word "and" when spoken, but rarely when written. This is why I stress that questions be worded to elicit one and only one answer, and if the questions allows for an answer that the original poster didn't think of, it is still a correct answer and should be acknowledged as such.



Four and twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie

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Originally posted by bedstor:

I agree with you I say it that way.Written down I'd write one Hundred zero(or Nought) one and so on. Placing an "and" doesn't look right...

You write a lot of cheques, do you? Writing e.g. "One hundred and twenty pounds" is a practice disliked by big companies and banks. A fraud could insert 'thous' before the 'and' .Their preference is to write "Onehundredtwentypounds" for that.Firms like Littlewoods Pools and Coral Bookmakers, who regularly issue many cheques in large sums to the public, take this to extremes, writing e.g "TWOHUNDREDFORTYONETHOUSANDTHREEHUNDREDTWENTYONEPOUNDS" in capitals.

Otherwise most people write the words for the numbers with 'and', don't they? I certainly do, just as the figure is said in Britain.

Seeing DG's post after I started writing this: do Americans normally say e.g "one hundred twenty" ? British people almost invariably say and write 'one hundred and twenty'.Those who don't say that are e.g. stockbrokers quoting prices, perhaps for the sake of clarity on the 'phone.

As Dg said...when written...on a check it would be "one hunderd one dollars...no and.

I write checks (cheques) regularly for $1225.00 as: Twelve hundred twenty-five----NO/100 dollars. Partly because they don't give a whole lot of room to write One thousand, two hundred and twenty-five. So far, my bank has never complained, nor have the recipients.

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So far, my bank has never complained, nor have the recipients.

I'd love to have the chance to complain, Frank.

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Originally posted by newnickname:
But people say "one hundred and one..."

Is "one hundred one" common?

My understanding is that "one hundred one" is proper. People say "Two thousand and eight" and people say "nu-cu-lar," but that does not make it correct.

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People say "Two thousand and eight" and people say "nu-cu-lar," but that does not make it correct.

Please don't get me going on this, Lexi.

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Originally posted by Elexina:

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Originally posted by newnickname:
But people say "one hundred and one..."

Is "one hundred one" common?

My understanding is that "one hundred one" is proper. People say "Two thousand and eight" and people say "nu-cu-lar," but that does not make it correct.

Well, Elexina, I don't think I've ever heard anyone British say 'one hundred one'. Your version must be American English, not English English American English likes brevity. That's why you 'protest a decision' whereas we 'protest against a decision' and your news reports say that someone 'spoke Sunday' and ours say 'spoke on Sunday'.

What year are we in ? We are in the year two thousand and eight over here .That's our proper form. And e.g. 1901 is 'nineteen oh one ' or 'nineteen hundred and one' or 'nineteen one' in Britain. It's never 'nineteen hundred one'

Thinking about it, my earlier example of a stockbroker saying e.g. 'one hundred twenty' on the phone isn't exactly right. They say 'one twenty' when giving a price of one hundred and twenty pence ( one pound twenty pence ).

I knew I'd get drawn back into this. What is the purpose of language: rules or communication? If I say one hundred and one or one hundred one, is either less comprehensible? Normative grammarians base their legitimacy on what? They ban split infinitives. Why? Because they didn't occur in Latin. Well, they couldn't occur in Latin. What is the difference between "It is the woman with whom I went out last night." and "It's the woman who I went out last night with."? Are they both comprehensible? I'm not a champion of Ebonics, nor sloppy English. But, come on.

Agreed JR and I bet a modern grammarian could find some subtle difference between 'who' and 'whom' in your examples, whereby both are grammatically correct!

And I can't think of any reason why the title of the book and film '101 Dalmations' could be properly said as 'one hundred and one' but only properly written as 'one hundred one'. That makes no sense in any version of English

(Incidentally, we may now be able to guess why Bedstor, who is English, couldn't understand the trivia question )

Over the last several decades, grammarians have moved away from a prescriptive to a descriptive stance. This may be why the Strunk and White book has taken flack. This is not to say that there should not be a more formal form spoken in certain contexts. Most of the university students I am acquainted with speak the same colloquial English with their friends, and then write it in job application letters. It is characterized by a limited vocabulary, slang, ambiguous constructions, and generally a complete disregard for the possibilities English presents.

What's proper in American English may not be so in English English, I realize that, and perhaps I'm biased because it seems that only the most unintelligible news folk who cannot form any sort of coherent sentence also say "one hundred AND one."

The thing is, I'm really not concerned with what is comprehensible. A conversation littered with "ain't" and "woot" and "y'all" might be comprehensible, but that doesn't make it correct or proper. That's really the gist of my point.

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A conversation littered with "ain't" and "woot" and "y'all" might be comprehensible, but that doesn't make it correct or proper.

True, Lexi, but we actually speak several forms of our language...or some us do, predicated by the setting we are in. My point was that more and more college students no longer have that ability.

I agree that most linguists formulate language as descriptive rather than prescriptive -- and that the debate will rage on forever. But even a purely descriptive approach can't ignore the fact that some modes of expression are more common than others, and that the 'rules' (even in a purely descriptive sense) may be different between formal written language and other more casual usages.

The trivia question that began this discussion is based on the rules of usage, regardless of whether those rules are rigidly enforced by English teachers or mere observations of actual people expressing themselves. Otherwise chaos reigns. You could, for instance, spell 3 as "threa" (rhymes with tea) or 7 as "seaven" (rhymes with heaven), which would certainly give different answers to the question. But in the end, what's the point?

Btw, I follow the rule of never including "and" in a written or spoken number.

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Otherwise chaos reigns. You could, for instance, spell 3 as "threa" (rhymes with tea) or 7 as "seaven" (rhymes with heaven),

Yes, but this is more a question orthography, which opens up a whole other Pandora's Box.

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Originally posted by juanruiz: My point was that more and more college students no longer have that ability.

Maybe that's part of the problem. People just don't care about wording or sentence structure or whether they come across sounding like a blithering idiot. I guess in an era of text messaging, they don't have to. But I still care.

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Originally posted by Professor: Btw, I follow the rule of never including "and" in a written or spoken number.

As do I. Plus, I checked with my teacher mother last night and her understanding is the same as mine: no and.