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This is very much a "different style guides have different prescriptions" thing, and so comes under the "first come, first served" policy on American and Commonwealth Spellings.
(My own preference is to always be consistent within a paragraph, e.g. if mentioning two ages, always give both in words or both in figures, but because of FCFS I wouldn't change to this in someone else's writing.)
So since it was that way launched, am I free to change it back?
I know more about obscure 1990s Middle Grade Literature novels than most people.
I wonder about the idea of blending them both in this case (since it's not a spelling issue, it's a style issue). Example: "Teams of two (2) race around the world in the hopes of winning five (5) luxury cars, a holiday and one hundred thousand dollars."
Generally it's one or the other, with only using double numbers if things are unclear or better, rewriting the sentence to make it so. So your example would be rendered as "Teams of two people race around the world in the hopes of winning five luxury cars, a holiday, and one hundred thousand dollars."
but the sentence "thirty five-year-olds went to the zoo with their kindergarten teacher" is better done as "thirty 5-year-olds went to zoo with their kindergarten teacher." or the more improved "The class of thirty students went to the zoo with their kindergarten teacher" and don't mention age at all.
And at the start you don't go "100 people are coming to the party" you go "one hundred people are coming to the party."
It's bad English grammar to mix the numbers outside of very unclear situations. And dates can always use the numbers, so "April 30, 1999" doesn't need to be written out.
Edited by Nethilia I know more about obscure 1990s Middle Grade Literature novels than most people.
I failed to ping ~HazelMcCallister properly.
Edited by Nethilia I know more about obscure 1990s Middle Grade Literature novels than most people.
There's some grammar standard that numbers under 10 should be spelled out (it varies between countries), but it's more of a recommendation itself and varies between 10 and 100. So the usual "if either are valid, the first one used stays until new consensus" applies.
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
Hello there. I've been going by AP style, which specifies figures for 10 and above with few exceptions, and all ages. If the site uses a different rule that says ages can be spelled out, I would appreciate knowing that.
Edited by HazelMcCallister Note to all: I don't participate in the forums here unless something much more important than TV Tropes content is at stake.
Looking at the page history, the numbers being changed are people's ages, and IIRC, ages should always be written in digits, regardless of the amount (few people live to 100+ after all).
Edited by Adept
~HazelMcCallister I see where we disconnected. I was taught MLA style
which says the majority of "simple" numbers (0-99), always at the start of a sentence or move it around to take it from the front, and when spelling the number out would be confusing in the sentence because you have a lot of them. I'm a writer, not a journalist, so I don't know AP style.
I'm not worried enough to change it back, and what you did is fine. It reads fine regardless if it says "5-year-olds" or "five-year-olds", they both mean the same thing and it's a matter of semantics. I mostly wanted to make sure there was no error I was making in my formatting. Doesn't appear to be any set rule, it's just more of a "whichever gets there first stays" so there's no back and forth editing.
I know more about obscure 1990s Middle Grade Literature novels than most people.
I hear you. Last thing I want to do is get in trouble over edit wars. Well, if the rule is just we stick with the first format that was used, I'll try to rein in my copy editor instincts in future.
Note to all: I don't participate in the forums here unless something much more important than TV Tropes content is at stake.
As mentioned upthread, according to American and Commonwealth Spellings the rule is "first come first served", and as far as I know consensus is that this policy also applies to things like "themselves vs themself" or the issue discussed here.
The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground
I launched a trope and in writing it wrote out the numbers below 100, since that's how I was taught to format numbers in writing — everything that can be two words should be written out (so everything below 100) and minimally, it's correct formatting to do at least every number below 10 and all numbers at the start of a sentence unless it's math you're writing Recently ~@HazelMcCallister changed the text so every written out number was turned into digits
. Including a five, which I was taught grammatically should always be spelled out. Examples of numbers in writing here
.
Is this a rule I'm breaking?
Edit for clarification on when numbers are written out.
Edited by Nethilia