How to write decimals in words
A decimal has two readings in ordinary use. One is for saying out loud and the other is for showing place value, and neither is a mistake.
Said aloud: digit by digit
After the decimal point, the digits are read one at a time. 3.14 is three point one four, not three point fourteen. 0.75 is zero point seven five.
This is the reading to use in speech, in dictation and anywhere the number has to be transcribed correctly. It is unambiguous: the listener does not have to work out how many decimal places there are in order to know what they heard. “Three point fourteen” would be ambiguous between 3.14 and 3.014, which is why nobody says it.
In a classroom: as a fraction
The same number is also read as a fraction of a power of ten. 3.14 is three and fourteen hundredths. 0.75 is seventy-five hundredths.
Count the digits after the point to get the name: one digit is tenths, two is hundredths, three is thousandths. This version shows the place value, which is its purpose in a maths lesson, but it becomes unusable quickly: nobody reads 3.14159 as three and fourteen thousand one hundred and fifty-nine hundred-thousandths.
| Number | Said aloud | As a fraction |
|---|---|---|
| 0.5 | zero point five | five tenths |
| 0.75 | zero point seven five | seventy-five hundredths |
| 3.14 | three point one four | three and fourteen hundredths |
| 1.05 | one point zero five | one and five hundredths |
| 12.5 | twelve point five | twelve and five tenths |
| 0.001 | zero point zero zero one | one thousandth |
| 1.50 | one point five | one and five tenths |
The point, and what comes before it
- The separator is “point”, not “dot” or “comma”. Dot is for web addresses and version numbers.
- Below one, British usage often says “nought point”, as in nought point five, where American usage says “zero point” or drops it entirely and says “point five”.
- In writing, keep the leading zero. 0.5, not .5. The zero is what stops the point being missed, which is why it is required in scientific, medical and financial writing.
- The fraction reading has no zero in front. 0.75 is seventy-five hundredths, not zero and seventy-five hundredths.
Trailing zeros
1.50 is read as one point five. The final zero adds nothing to the value, and in speech it is simply not said.
Money is the exception. There the second decimal place is a count of cents, so 1.50 is one rand and fifty cents, and the zero carries the meaning. That is why amounts of money go through a separate tool with rules of its own.
In measurement the trailing zero carries a different meaning again: 1.50 metres claims precision to the centimetre where 1.5 claims only a tenth of a metre. There the zero says how the number was measured.
A note on the separator elsewhere
Much of continental Europe, and several other countries, use a comma for the decimal point and a full stop or a space for the thousands separator. So 1.500,75 there is 1,500.75 here. The tools write the English convention throughout. They read the other where it cannot be mistaken, so 1.500,75 and 1 500,75 are both read as 1,500.75, while 1,500 is always fifteen hundred.