A misheard number costs you a delivery, a meeting or an order. This is high-value, low-glamour English.

Years

  • 1995 → "nineteen ninety-five"
  • 2008 → "two thousand and eight"
  • 2026 → "twenty twenty-six" or "two thousand and twenty-six"

Dates

The order differs and it matters:

  • British: "the fourteenth of August" — written 14/08
  • American: "August fourteenth" — written 08/14

03/04 is 3 April in the UK and 4 March in the US. When it matters, write the month as a word.

Phone numbers

Say digits individually, in small groups, with a pause between them. 0 is usually "oh" in speech. Repeated digits often become "double": 77 → "double seven".

Prices

  • ₹250 → "two hundred and fifty rupees"
  • $19.99 → "nineteen ninety-nine" or "nineteen dollars ninety-nine"
  • £1,500 → "fifteen hundred pounds" or "one thousand five hundred pounds"

Large numbers: the lakh problem

Lakh and crore are not understood outside South Asia. Convert them:

  • 1 lakh = one hundred thousand (100,000)
  • 10 lakh = one million
  • 1 crore = ten million

Fractions and percentages

  • 50% → "fifty percent"
  • 0.5 → "zero point five" or "point five"
  • ¾ → "three quarters"
  • 2.5x → "two and a half times"
Always read numbers back. "So that's four-two-zero, not four-two-oh-four?" takes five seconds and prevents a wasted day.