About

What it is

NumberQuill writes numbers out in English and reads them back. Around that sit 17 tools, 153 pages for numbers people look up, reference tables for Roman numerals, and 12 short pages explaining the rules.

It is free, it needs no account, and it works entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is uploaded anywhere.

Ambiguous input

When an input could mean more than one thing, or an answer cannot be given with certainty, the tools say so and stop.

• Type “nineteen eighty-four” into the words converter and it tells you that this is a year read as two numbers.
• Type an amount with three decimal places into the money tool and it points out that money has two. Rounding would put a different figure on your invoice from the one you meant.
• Ask whether a number beyond a certain size is prime and it says it cannot decide with certainty.

Where two answers are both right, as when British and American English disagree about the word “and”, the tools show the convention in use and give you the other one as well.

How the answers are checked

Every tool and every page runs on the same conversion code. Before any change is published, that code writes every number up to ten thousand in words and reads it back in both conventions, turns all 3,999 Roman numerals into numbers and back, and has its prime test checked against a separate sieve.

The answers printed on the ready-made pages (each number, numeral and amount) are then worked out again and compared with what the page says. If any check fails, the change is not published.

Who runs it

NumberQuill is operated by Inyonitech Solutions (Pty) Ltd, an independent company registered in South Africa. It is not affiliated with any publisher, dictionary, school, examination board or standards body.

It is to be paid for by advertising, and by nothing else; no advertisement is shown yet. There is no premium tier, no data to sell and no sponsored content. When advertisements do appear they will be placed by hand, below the tool rather than above it, and the site is deliberately built to be just as useful with advertising blocked.

Where the rules come from

Number words, punctuation and the spelling of ordinals are conventions, and the major style guides disagree with each other in places. Where they do, the reference pages say so and name each convention. Where a choice had to be made (the short scale, the standard modern Roman form, British English as the default), it is stated on the page that uses it.

Corrections

If you find an answer that is wrong, please write to hello@numberquill.com. A wrong conversion is fixed before anything else.