"And" in Written Numbers: British vs American Usage
Last updated 24 August 2026
Write 142 out and you have a choice that splits along national lines. British English says one hundred and forty-two. American English says one hundred forty-two. Neither is a mistake; they are conventions of different varieties, and the only real error is switching between them inside one document.
Where the “and” goes
When it appears, the “and” sits immediately before the final part of the number below one hundred — never anywhere else:
| Number | British | American |
|---|---|---|
| 142 | one hundred and forty-two | one hundred forty-two |
| 1,042 | one thousand and forty-two | one thousand forty-two |
| 1,142 | one thousand one hundred and forty-two | one thousand one hundred forty-two |
| 1,500 | one thousand five hundred | one thousand five hundred |
| 2,000 | two thousand | two thousand |
The last two rows matter more than they look. A number with no tens-or-units part takes no “and” in either variety, because there is nothing for it to introduce. This is why 1,500 and 2,000 are written identically on both sides of the Atlantic, and why the question only ever arises for numbers whose final two digits are not zero.
Which to use
- British, Irish, Australian, New Zealand and most Commonwealth writing: keep the “and”. Omitting it reads as an Americanism.
- American writing: drop it. Style guides including Chicago and AP set numbers without it, and it is what American readers expect in formal text.
- International or mixed audiences: either works. Consistency matters more than the choice.
This converter produces the American form by default, because the check and contract conventions it is most often used for are American. Each number page shows the British form alongside it, so you can take whichever you need.
The other “and” — money
There is a second “and” that has nothing to do with nationality, and conflating the two is the usual source of confusion. On a check or in an invoice total, “and” separates the whole units from the fraction:
One hundred forty-two and 50/100
Here “and” means “plus fifty hundredths of a dollar”. It is a decimal point spelled out, not the British connector. An American writer who drops the “and” inside the number still writes it before the cents, and a British writer ends up with two of them in one line — one hundred and forty-two and 50/100 — which is correct, if ungainly. Many British bank forms sidestep this by using “pounds” as the separator instead.
Why the difference exists
Both forms are old, and neither is a corruption of the other. The “and” reflects an older English habit of treating the parts of a number as separate quantities joined together — four score and seven is the same construction. American English shed it during the nineteenth century, partly under the influence of arithmetic teaching that read numbers as columns rather than as sums, and partly because printers and telegraph operators favoured the shorter form.
What survives is a genuine dialect difference rather than a rule anyone imposed. Webster’s early American spellers already omit it; contemporary British school practice still teaches it. If you have been corrected in both directions at different times, that is why.
Speech versus writing
Spoken English is looser than either rule suggests. American speakers say “a hundred and forty-two” routinely, even where they would write it without. Conversely, the shorter form is common in British speech when reading figures aloud quickly. The written conventions above describe formal writing; nobody is counting your “and”s in conversation.
Related
- The guide to spelling numbers in words covers the wider set of rules, including hyphenation and large numbers.
- Writing numbers in legal documents explains why amounts appear twice and which form controls.
- Any specific number, in both forms: try the converter or browse numbers in words.