Words to Number Converter

Going the other way? Convert a figure back to words →

How do you convert a word to a number?

Number words read back to a figure one group at a time: nine thousand nine hundred and eighty-one is 9981. Each scale name closes a group, so multiply what came before it by that scale and start again. Add the groups together and the figure falls out.

1. Type or paste the wording into the box. Capitals, hyphens and the word and are all optional.
2. Read forward until a scale name appears. Everything before it is that group.
3. Multiply the group by its scale name and hold the total.
4. Add the last group, which carries no scale name, to what you are holding.
5. Copy the figure, or swap the direction to write a figure back out in words.

Words and Their Figures

The words below are the ones the reader knows. Anything outside them is refused by name rather than guessed at. English names large numbers on the short scale, where each name is a thousand times the one before it: a thousand thousand is a million, a thousand million is a billion, and a thousand billion is a trillion.

Worked Example: nine thousand nine hundred and eighty-one to Number

"nine thousand nine hundred and eighty-one" has one scale name in it, so it has two groups. The working below reads each group and shows what it is worth.

The groups add up to 9981, which is what the box above shows. The seed below is this page's own, and the page that writes words uses the same one.

Check it in reverse

To verify the result by hand, write the same figure back in words and compare it with what you started from.

Worked examples: words to numbers

Each example gives the value first, then the working. Select a value to load it in the converter.

Every example above reverses exactly — spell the same amount back out in words.

Which Wordings Are Read Here

This reader is deliberately generous about spelling and strict about structure. The conventions below say what a wording means; the converter accepts every variant of them and refuses anything it cannot place.

What Wording Does This Accept?

And, With or Without

British English writes one hundred and one; American English writes one hundred one, because American students are taught not to use and anywhere in the whole part of a number. The reader takes either, so one hundred and one and one hundred one both give the same figure.

Hyphens Are Optional Here

A number from 21 to 99 whose second digit is not zero is written as two words joined by a hyphen: twenty-one, thirty-two, ninety-nine. On the way in the hyphen carries no meaning, so twenty one reads the same as twenty-one.

What Is Refused

A scale name with nothing before it, a scale name that climbs again, and a word that names no number are all refused, each with the word that broke the reading. Guessing at a wording would be a confident wrong answer.

Common Mistakes

• Writing hundred on its own. It needs a number before it, so one hundred rather than hundred.
• Repeating a scale name. Each one is used once, largest first, so two thousand thousand is refused.
• Expecting a cipher. This reads an amount written in English; it does not turn A into 1.
• Naming the digits after the point as a whole number. Two point five is 2.5, and two point fifty is refused.

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Conversions

• Roman numerals are the other notation this family reads — work out what a Roman numeral is worth.
• If you want Roman numerals rather than words, turn a figure into Roman numerals instead.

The rest of the family sits on back to the numeral converter.