Number to Words Converter
Convert any number to words in English. Also shows ordinal form, currency and Roman numerals. Instant and completely offline.
Why spell numbers out
Cheque and contract amounts must be written in words to be legally valid in most jurisdictions, because a written number is much harder to alter than a figure. It is also required on legal forms, invoices, and school assignments.
How English builds numbers
English combines the base-twelve dozen and the base-twenty score into a decimal system. Numbers below a thousand are built from hundreds, tens and units:
| Number | Words |
|---|---|
| 42 | forty-two |
| 105 | one hundred and five |
| 1,000 | one thousand |
| 1,500,000 | one and a half million, or one million five hundred thousand |
Note the and before the final group: "two hundred and sixty" is the standard form, though "two hundred sixty" is increasingly accepted in American English.
Ordinals
The first, second and third take a different suffix from everything else:
- 1st, 2nd, 3rd
- 4th, 21st, 22nd, 23rd, 111th
Anything ending in 1 but not 11 takes -st, ending in 2 but not 12 takes -nd, and ending in 3 but not 13 takes -rd. Everything else takes -th.
Roman numerals
Roman numerals are positional but subtractively written: IV is 5, not 4, and IX is 9. The subtractive pairs are only IV, IX, XL, XC, CD and CM — so IIII is never correct for 4, and IC is not a valid numeral at all.
Roman numerals have no standard representation for zero or for numbers above 3,999, which is why they fell out of everyday use.
Frequently asked questions
Does it handle decimal numbers?
Yes. The decimal part is read out digit by digit, so 1234.56 becomes "one thousand two hundred and thirty-four point five six".
Is there a limit on the size of the number?
It handles integers up to around 999 quintillion comfortably. Beyond that, JavaScript's floating point precision becomes the limiting factor.
Why is there an "and" in British number words?
The "and" marks the end of the hundreds group, so 105 is "one hundred and five". It is standard in British English and increasingly omitted in American English.
What is the correct way to write 4 in Roman numerals?
IV, using the subtractive form. IIII is sometimes used on clock faces as a decorative tradition, but IV is the correct standard form.
Can I convert words back to a number?
Not in this tool, but the result is plain English that most spreadsheet and code libraries can parse with a word-to-number library.