Tip of the Week #88

By Bernard Appiah | 31 July 2012

Standard practice in scholarly publishing is to write out a number if it begins a sentence. Therefore, it generally would not be acceptable to write, "12 of the 15 dogs recovered." Instead, one could write, "Twelve of the 15 dogs recovered" or "Of the 15 dogs, 12 recovered."

Tip of the week 88

Posted by Baba Shehu Umar Ibn Abubakar at 01 August 2012 08:48 AM

This is very interesting to know and many have made mistake attemptiing to begin sentence with numbers

Tip of the Week #88

Posted by Ben Mudrak at 01 August 2012 11:44 AM

Thanks for the tip, Bernard -- great advice! I just want to add that chemical compounds can be an exception. One can mention a compound such as 1,1,1-trichloroethane at the start of a sentence, and these numbers should not be written out. When such a compound is present at the start of a sentence, the first letter of the name is still capitalized, even though the number prefix precedes it:

1,1,1-Trichloroethane was added to the mixture.