About
Numbers in words, done properly
NumWords began in 2021 as a handful of pages answering one question people kept asking search engines: “how do I write this number in words?” It has grown into a reference of 699 numbers and a converter that handles anything up to 999 billion.
What NumWords does
Type a figure and NumWords spells it out in British English, with the “and” after the hundreds, hyphens in compound numbers, and nothing between the thousands, millions and billions. Every number page also gives the cheque wording, the American English form, the Indian lakh and crore form, the place values and the common mistakes – so the answer is useful whether you are filling in a cheque in Manchester, an invoice in Mumbai or an essay in Melbourne.
Why British English?
Most online number converters follow American conventions and quietly drop the “and”. That is fine in Ohio and wrong on a UK cheque. NumWords defaults to the British form used across the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan and most of the Commonwealth, and shows the American form alongside it so that nobody is caught out.
How the conversions are checked
All conversions are produced by a single, deterministic set of rules that encodes the conventions described in our rules guide. The rules are checked against published style guidance (Oxford, the Guardian and Economist style guides, and UK banking guidance on cheque wording) and against the spelling of every number from one to one hundred. If you find an error, tell us and we will fix it.
Privacy
Conversion happens in your browser. Nothing you type is sent to us. The site shows advertising through Google AdSense to cover hosting costs; details are in the privacy policy.