Writing the numbers from 1 to 100 in words, with the usual spelling traps
13 thirteen - 30 thirty - 14 fourteen - 40 forty - 21 twenty-one
How to use this sheet
The words for 1 to 12 are separate items and have to be learnt one by one, because nothing in them can be worked out. From 13 to 19 each word is built on the unit, sometimes slightly reshaped, plus one fixed ending; the multiples of 10 are built on those same stems with a different ending, which is why the two series are so easily confused in writing and in speech. Everything from 21 to 99 is then assembled from those sets: the multiple of 10 first, the unit second, joined by a hyphen. The round figure at the top of the range needs a determiner in front of it and stays singular. These are the cardinal numbers, used for counting; the ordinals used for ranking form a separate series.
| Numeral | Written form | Wrong forms learners write |
|---|---|---|
| 1-5 | one, two, three, four, five | won, tow, tree, for, fiv |
| 6-10 | six, seven, eight, nine, ten | sevin, eght, nien |
| 11 | eleven | elleven, eleaven |
| 12 | twelve | twelf, twelv |
| 13 | thirteen | threeteen, thirtheen |
| 14-16 | fourteen, fifteen, sixteen | forteen, fiveteen |
| 17-19 | seventeen, eighteen, nineteen | eightteen, ninteen |
| 20 | twenty | twoty, twenteen |
| 30 | thirty | threety, thirdy |
| 40 | forty | fourty, fortey |
| 50-90 | fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety | fivety, eightty, ninty |
| 21, 45 | twenty-one, forty-five | twenty one, twentyone, fourty-five |
| 57, 99 | fifty-seven, ninety-nine | fifty seven, ninetynine, fivety-seven |
| 100 | one hundred (also: a hundred) | one hundreds, hundred |
In use
There are twenty-eight students in the class and only fifteen chairs. My sister is thirteen and my mother is thirty-nine. The tickets cost forty-five pounds each, and the hall holds ninety-nine people.
Watch out
My brother is twenty one and my mother is fivety three.
A pair of faults appears in that sentence. Both ages fall between 21 and 99, and every number in that range is written as a single hyphenated word: leaving a space between the halves, as the sentence does in both places, is the commonest written error at this level, and running the halves together with nothing between them is the next commonest. Then there is the spelling of the second age. The multiples of 10 built on the units 2, 3, 4 and 5 do not simply add the ending to the unit word; each of those changes shape, and the multiple built on 4 drops a letter that the unit itself and the corresponding word in the 13 to 19 series both keep. The multiples built on 6 to 9 are close to regular, so the irregular stems are few.