THE GRAMMAR OF NUMBERS AND TIME

Your handling of numbers and time
reflects the clarity of your thinking
By Jose A. Carillo

Some people are very finicky with the grammar and the overall look and styling of their English expositions, but they are often very inconsistent and messy in handling their numbers and timekeeping. Rarely do they have a firm system for when numbers should be stated in figures or when they should be spelled out in words, so they end up writing memos, letters, or reports that are often too unsightly and unpleasant to read.

How people handle numbers and time in their prose is, of course, a clear reflection of their mental discipline and the clarity of their thinking. This is why self-respecting companies and institutions adopt a writing stylebook and require everybody in the organization to adhere to its prescriptions. Still, it takes a lot of doing to get everybody to follow that stylebook correctly and religiously, as evidenced by the spotty handling of numbers and time by the scores of writers—even professional journalists and corporate communicators—that I have edited over the years.

That situation was what prompted me to write the essay below, “The Grammar of Numbers and Time,” for my English-usage column in The Manila Times way back in 2003. I am posting this retrospective here in my blogspot to help people who don’t have or aren’t obliged to follow any stylebook yet to be more systematic in dealing with numbers and time in their written work.

The grammar of numbers and time

A math wizard from Bangalore, India by the name of Shakantula Devi made it to the Guinness Book of Records in 1980 when she mentally multiplied two 13-digit numbers in 28 seconds. This was the arithmetic operation she performed: 7, 686, 369, 774, 870  x  2, 465, 099, 745, 779 = 18, 947, 668, 177, 995, 426, 773, 730. Since then, Ms. Devi had been routinely beating sophisticated computers right in their own turf. In one such contest, she took only 50 seconds to get the 23rd root of a 21-digit number, while the computer took more than a minute to perform the same job.

My point in writing about Ms. Devi’s astounding arithmetic powers is not really to goad lesser mortals to try to emulate her feat, nor to shame the arithmetic-challenged among us to improve their basic computing skills, but simply to encourage people to accord more respect to numbers in their English prose. Take note, for instance, that I did not write the year “1980” in the first paragraph as “The Year of Our Lord Nineteen Hundred and Eighty” (as some lawyers are still wont to do even now); that I did not write “13-digit” as “thirteen-digit”; that I did not write “28 seconds” as “twenty-eight seconds”; and that I did not write “23rd” as “twenty-third.” The grammar of numbers and time is not a science—too many national and cultural variations militate against a universal numbers-writing style—but we certainly can minimize unsightly crimes of prose innumeracy by agreeing on a basic numbers stylebook.

Let us begin with two generally accepted rules: (1) numbers from 1 to 10 should be written as words when used in a sentence: “The customer ordered eight red shirts and five blue ones, but returned three browns”; and (2) numbers from 11 upwards in a sentence should be written in figures: “The professor discovered to her dismay that 12 of her pupils were absent, and that 546 of the entire student population did not make it to their classes either.” And if perchance the sentence has numbers ranging from 1 to any number higher than 10, the two rules above still hold even if it means mixing figures and spelled-out numbers: “We counted a total of 800 words in her essay and found ten misspelled words and 17 wrong word choices.”

There are just two notable exceptions to these rules. First, any number that starts a sentence should be written in words: “Thirteen is considered an unlucky number by some people.” “Four hundred eighty-two years ago, a Portuguese explorer stumbled on a group of islands on the Pacific and named it the Archipelago of St. Lazarus.” Second, when numbers are used to list a series of items within a sentence, all such numbers should be written as figures (or digits) even for numbers below 11: “These are the 14 reasons why I won’t live in your city: (1) the traffic is horrible, (2) the overcrowding is simply too much, (3) the cost of living is too high, and… (14) it gets so cold there in winter.”

Many people, of course, after writing out a number in words, indiscriminately repeat them in figures enclosed in parenthesis, as in: “I would like to discuss with you today three (3) aspects of the problem being encountered by four (4) of our regional offices.” Is this correct usage? Definitely not; this kind of absurd overemphasis literally insults the reader. This should be strictly confined to commercial or legal writing, as in writing checks or in preparing affidavits to make sure that nobody can easily monkey around with the numbers: “Pay to Cash: Five Thousand Two Hundred Sixty Pesos Only (PhP5,260.00)” “…for and in consideration of the delivery of Eight Hundred Sixty-Seven (867) pieces of widgets.”

Marking time gives us more latitude in using numbers. We can write, say, “9:00 A.M. (or a.m.)” or “nine o’clock in the morning” depending on the accuracy we want to convey. But most everybody on the planet is agreed that exact dates should be written in numbers, as in “August 24, 1946.”

We have to take up just three more important rules about writing numbers before we close: (1) We should use figures and not spell out numbers immediately before a unit of measure: “a 10-minute wait,” “a 3-3/4 cm. length of tape,” “16 Megahertz on the FM band”; (2) We should use figures and not spell out numbers that represent statistical or mathematical functions or formulas: “divided by 6,” “multiplied by 9,” “a ratio of 50:1,” “8% bigger”; and (3) We should use figures and not spell out numbers that represent time, ages, money, sizes, scores, and points on a scale: “at 12 midnight,” “4 years old,” “$9,” “5 cm. x 12 cm.,” “73:69,” and “Intensity 5 on the Richter Scale.”

We use numbers all the time in our lives, so it pays to do our numbers right.(November 12, 2003) 

--------

From my weekly column “English Plain and Simple” in The Manila Times, November 12, 2003 issue, © 2003 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. This essay later became Chapter 129 of my book Give Your English the Winning Edge, ©2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

A CAUTIONARY TALE FOR OUR TIMES

Indignities in American Minor
By Jose A. Carillo

This is much too unglamorous to admit, and my wife Leonor actually blanched when she read the first draft of this essay. But I told her firmly that it was a story I had to write once and for all as a cautionary tale for our times. Four years before September 11, 2001, while I was lined up at Los Angeles Customs for my flight back to Manila, U.S. agents took me away and made me strip down to my underwear. It was not a particularly chilly autumn day in the West Coast, and America then was still the carefree blonde in a two-piece, traipsing barefoot on Long Beach, singing an innocent little ditty about freedom and clueless of the horrible outrage that was to befall her four years later. But even with the good heating at the airport I found myself shivering. I simply could not take the frisking and the progressive nakedness with grace and equanimity.

What a shame, I thought, to be put in the same class as the terrorists, mobsters, drug lords, and potbellied politicians who routinely deserved such searches! There I was, clothesless and listless in the City of the Angels, trying with some delicacy to shield with my hands as much of my crotch from the prying eyes that were all over me. But no matter how sophisticated I tried to look and how impeccable the English I used in my protestations, I was a practically naked alien under a host country’s sufferance, and short of begging, at that moment there wasn’t really much I could do to change that fact.

The female agent also asked me to take off my shoes. She did it in probably much the same way that a fellow agent did it to a Filipino senator who, I read in the news just now, went through the same body search recently in San Francisco. I did not refuse nor even make a squeak, however. One reason was that I wasn’t a senator from another country but a nobody. I would never know the pleasure of breezing through Customs without anybody laying as much as a hand on me, even if it was obvious that I carried contraband or a ton of plastic bomb on my belly. But what really took out much of the sting from the indignity was that I was not the only one targeted. And looking back, I realize now that it actually might have been my fault to be zeroed in along with the six who were behind me in the queue.

Aside from wearing my old spring windbreaker that I regularly used for Decembers back home in Manila, I had the bad sense to hand-carry all the way from the East Coast a bulky, heavily padded green winter jacket lined with Teflon. I am actually of the lean sort, but I must have looked like a drug runner laden with cocaine whenever my bulk showed on their surveillance monitors. In any case, they asked me and the six others to step aside: a sixtyish woman in a wheelchair, an Oriental-looking gentleman in a very respectable-looking dark gray suit, and four or five Filipinos with their trademark huge shoulder bags and mountainous backpacks.

The agents led us to a nearby inspection room, and in no time they had efficiently dismantled the wheelchair into a neat pile of tubes and nuts and bolts. They cautiously jiggled and peered inside each tube, but found nothing explosive or incendiary. Then the young, portly female agent, who looked every inch of Filipino parentage, frisked the old woman in the wheelchair, ever politely asking and helping her disengage the strap of her bra. Again there was nothing, not even a little vial of cocaine nor a lipstick case of crack for the effort. Then finally it was my turn. She started frisking me. In the best English that I could muster, I asked her: “Why have you chosen me for this? Do I look like a criminal?” And she replied in the best and most dispassionate Tagalog that she could muster: “Trabaho lang po.  Natiyempuhan lang kayo.” (“Just doing my job, sir. You just happened to be it.”) Finding nothing on me, of course, she said: “Sori sir. Pasensiya na kayo.” (“I’m sorry for this. My apologies for doing it.”) She asked me to put my clothes back on, then waved the dignified-looking man to come forward.

As he started to strip, the man tried his best to look nonchalant about the whole thing, but I noticed that his brow began to sweat and twitch a little. I suddenly had the inkling that the agents would not be disappointed this time. True enough, when the man took off his sando and was down to his briefs, there came into view several thick bundles of U.S. currency, securely bound with masking tape to the front, back, and sides of his torso. There must have several hundred thousands of dollars of the notes on him. “I’m sorry, sir,” the agent said with barely suppressed distaste, “you have attempted to take out currency beyond the $10,000-limit without declaring it, a violation of U.S. law.” She then asked all six of us to go, and began reading the man his Miranda rights.

I may make light of the tough security measures that the U.S. now imposes on citizens and foreigners alike passing through its ports, but I do not really wish to trivialize what September 11 has done to the nation that we once knew as the Land of Milk and Honey. The fact is that September 11 has changed most of America’s icons and rules. And make no mistake about it now, because I say this in all practical seriousness: If you are going to San Francisco or LA or New York or Chicago, it will no longer be enough to wear flowers on your hair or make a “Peace!” sign with your fingers. You better be in your best form and best behavior. Give your paunch and toenails a good trim and don’t forget to wear clean socks. Have a nice haircut, and consider shaving off your prized mustache or goatee. Don’t bank on charm and diplomatic immunity. And remember, practice your English and watch your temper. Nothing will better qualify you for being asked to step aside the Customs queue in LA or San Francisco to be grilled or stripped than an atrocious or non-existent English or, much worse, a flare-up of a monumental ego.

Sadly and forever, as the old refrain goes, everything is different now in America because of September 11. (2003)

This essay, which first appeared in my English-usage column in The Manila Times and subsequently formed part of my book English Plain and Simple: No-Nonsense Ways to Learn Today's Global Language, is part of a collection of my personal essays  that appeared in my column from mid-2002.

NO-NONSENSE WAYS TO LEARN TODAY'S GLOBAL LANGUAGE

English as Our Language for Business
By Jose A.Carillo

As someone who worked for many years in corporate communication, I am sometimes asked what language would be best for business. Is it that bewildering language called corporatese, which uses stilted and convoluted English like “It has come to the undersigned’s attention that…” or “Yours truly respectfully requests that immediate action be taken on the aforementioned matter”? I must admit that for a while I was so beguiled by such lofty language that I started using it myself. I began to think that to be believed, to be followed, and to get results, you must not write as you would talk. You must use language several notches higher and airier than the English of ordinary mortals. Corporatese was the language of authority, of distinction. You must learn it by heart to be effective, to climb quickly up the corporate ladder.

IMAGE CREDIT: LINKEDIN.COM

In time, however, it dawned on me that corporatese simply could not be the language of business. How could sensible people who want results use such an obtuse, roundabout language? I also discovered that corporatese had become the norm in many companies not because it made communication more effective, but because it had been handed down by generations of executives who did not know any better. So, if not corporatese, what business language then is better? My answer now is this: it all depends on who the audience is. Our language of choice should carefully consider the unique mixture of executives, managers, staff, and workers in an organization. Each of them brings a business language of his own into the organization. The accountant will talk accountese with fellow accountants, the lawyers will talk legalese, the researchers will talk researchese, and the marketing people will talk…well, how about calling it marketingese? The corporation on a typical day is, in fact, a Babel of the argot of every profession, occupation, or trade that finds it way into its fold.

This was the situation when one time, an accountant in the big corporation I worked for jokingly threatened his associates, most of them also accountants, in these exact words in Tagalog: “Huwag kayong magluluko at isang journal entry lang, yari kayong lahat.” [“Don’t fool around with me because I could do you all in with just one journal entry.”] Of course, being a non-accountant and too ashamed to ask, it took me a long time to fully understand that line. You have to know accounting intimately to discover how deliciously malicious that remark is; I will not even attempt to explain it here, so better ask your own friendly accountant what it means.

The point I would like to make is that in that remark, we are up against deep jargon—that short-cut language of professionals and tradesmen to the highly specialized knowledge in their heads. If he didn’t use jargon, it probably would have taken my accountant-friend ten times longer to drive home his point, and the joke would have been lost.

In any case, I actually hated jargon because it was often my job to interpret it painstakingly in writing for lay readers. But soon I learned to tolerate it, especially when I discovered that it was actually the professional’s way of being brief, concise, and to the point when talking business. Also, I saw that when used solely within a circle of peers, jargon could actually be as harmless as the coded language we sometimes cultivate with very close friends.

IMAGE CREDIT: COMPANIESHOUSE.BLOG.GOV.UK

The problem with jargon arises only when professionals and managers habitually use it even when writing or talking to lay people. Then it becomes a serious communication stumbling block. You probably have heard and seen some of those jargon-struck executives guesting on TV or radio, so confident that they look and sound brilliant with their jargon, but actually befuddling us with some of the jargon they say. They are the same people who, back in their organizations, will write corporatese and highly technical memos and letters that need to be painstakingly deciphered word for word, phrase by phrase. They have become so immersed and comfortable with corporatese and jargon that they could not imagine that they have actually become dark harbingers of confusion.

These jargon-fanciers, of course, are unfortunate that they have not yet discovered one thing--that the most successful executives and managers are those who do not publicly use corporatese and who, outside their professional circles, shun jargon like the plague. These executives and managers are the better communicators because they know that the language of business should neither be stilted and obtuse nor technical, but one that, without having to be clarified, can be understood perfectly by most everyone. The language that meets all of these criteria is, of course, plain and simple English. It is the English that knows and respects its audience, no matter who they are. It is, in fact, the superior business language that we have been looking for all this time—not knowing that we already had it and had already been using it all along.

****

The above essay on the "The Language of Business" appears in Part III - "Usage and Style" of Jose Carillo's book English Plain and Simple: No-Nonsense Ways to Learn Today's Global Language (Third Updated Edition, 2023; 500 pages), copyright 2008 by the ManilaTimes Publishing Corp. The book is available at National Book Store and Facebook branches in key Philippine cities. For volume orders and overseas deliveries, send e-mail inquiring about pricing and bulk discounts to Manila Times Publishing Corp. at circulation@manilatimes.net, or call Tel. +63285245664 to 67 locals 117 and 222.