cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/21049862
The only numbers I will ever spell are one and zero, and only when using them as a pronoun, or for emphasis, respectively.
Is there ever a reason to not to use symbols when dealing with numbers? Why would "fourteen whatevers" ever be preferable to "14 whatevers". It's just so much easier to read numbers as symbols, not spelled out.
(Caveat, not including multipliers, like "273 billion").
This is how I approach it. If there's only a few numbers mentioned and they're small, write them out. If there's many numbers mentioned, then they should all be numbers. And I catch myself messing it up all the time and going back to edit the one number I put in there because it just looks wrong. Context is everything, really.