Number to Words Converter

How to use the converter

1. Type or paste your numbers into Numbers (one per line), or click Example to load five samples.
2. Pick what you need under Write as: Words (one hundred), Ordinal (hundredth) or Check amount (dollars and cents).
3. Choose a Style (check amounts are always US): US (one hundred one) or UK (one hundred and one).
4. Choose a Letter case: lowercase, Sentence case, Title Case or UPPERCASE.
5. The result updates as you type. Click Copy, or Download .txt to save it.

Each line of input gives one line of output in the same order, and empty lines stay empty, so a list of 50 invoice totals comes back as 50 written amounts you can paste next to the originals.

The three output modes

• Words writes the number as it is read aloud. Decimal digits are read one at a time after “point”, and a minus sign becomes “negative”.
• Ordinal changes the last word to its ordinal form: one becomes first, twelve becomes twelfth, forty becomes fortieth, hundred becomes hundredth. It needs a whole number; 3.0 is accepted as 3, but 2.5 is not.
• Check amount writes the dollars in words, then “and”, the cents as a fraction over 100 and the word “dollars”. It starts with a capital letter even when lowercase is selected, because that is how the amount line is normally written.

US and UK style: where “and” goes

The only difference between the two styles is the word “and”. British English uses it after “hundred” when more follows, and before a final group under 100 in a larger number; American English usually leaves it out.

Round numbers such as 1,100 are the same in both. Both styles use the short scale (a billion is 1,000,000,000) and hyphenate the numbers from 21 to 99, as in twenty-one and ninety-nine.

The Check amount mode ignores this option and always writes the US form, so the only “and” on a check is the one that separates dollars from cents: 1001.10 gives “One thousand one and 10/100 dollars” with either style.

Writing a check amount

US banks ask you to write the amount twice: in figures in the box on the right and in words on the line below the payee. The written form is “dollars in words and cents over 100”, as in Chase’s example “one hundred five dollars and 50/100”. This tool follows that pattern:

Amounts with more than two decimals are rounded half up to the cent, and 100 cents carry into the next dollar, as the last two rows show. Negative amounts are refused, since a check cannot be written for less than zero. Many printed checks already end the line with “Dollars”; in that case leave the last word out when you copy the amount, or use the version that matches your check form.

What the tool accepts

The converter reads digits with an optional sign and one decimal point, and ignores the separators people commonly type between groups of digits (commas only where they are real thousands separators, see below):

Anything else, such as $1,234.56, 12.5%, 1/2 or 1e6, gives a message in parentheses on that line, and a note says how many lines could not be read. For $1,234.56, €1,234 or 1,234 USD the message also says to leave out currency signs and codes. Strip currency signs and units first, or use the number extractor to pull the numbers out of a longer text.

Commas are accepted only as thousands separators before the decimal point: the last group after a comma must have three digits and earlier groups two or three, so 1,234,567 and Indian 12,34,567 both work. A decimal comma, as used in many European countries, gives an error instead of a wrong number: 1,5, 12,34 and 1.234,56 each show “has a comma that is not a thousands separator. Use a period as the decimal point (1234.56 or 1,234.56).” Replace the decimal comma with a period (and drop the dots between thousands) before converting.

Trailing zeros after the decimal point are kept and read aloud, so 3.10 is “three point one zero”. The largest whole number is 36 digits long (999 decillion); the scale words run thousand, million, billion, trillion, quadrillion, quintillion, sextillion, septillion, octillion, nonillion and decillion.

Letter case

Title Case capitalizes both parts of a hyphenated number and keeps “and” lowercase, so UK 101 becomes “One Hundred and One”. For other capitalization rules, run the result through the title case converter or the sentence case converter.

When people need it

• Writing checks, invoices and receipts where the amount must appear in words as well as figures.
• Legal and financial documents such as contracts and promissory notes that state sums in words, often in capital letters; choose UPPERCASE.
• Converting a column from a spreadsheet: copy the numbers from Excel or Google Sheets, convert them in one go and paste the column back. The comma separator joins the lines if you need them in one row instead.
• Style guides that spell out numbers, for example at the start of a sentence, or ordinals in formal invitations (“the twenty-first of June”).
• Teaching and checking spelling of tricky numbers such as forty (not fourty), ninth and twelfth.

The conversion runs in your browser; the numbers you type are not sent anywhere.

Questions