What it is
The same quantity can be set as a numeral or spelled out as a word, and every authority with an opinion draws the line somewhere. Below the line the number is a word, above it a figure, and exceptions pull particular classes of number to one side regardless of size.
What varies is not only where the line falls but what kind of line it is. Some authorities set a threshold, an integer above which figures begin. Others set a domain: what the number is about decides the form, and size never enters. The two criteria answer different questions, so neither converts into the other.
This record owns the quantity. A number labelling a provision, an annex or a point is a designator and belongs to subdivision-numbering, whose retention rule reaches across the language pair where these thresholds do not.
Where the expectation comes from
Four authorities rule this class, and they divide two against two on the criterion before they divide on the answer.
- The English Style Guide uses words for one to nine and figures from ten upward at 6.1, with figures required for all numbers on web pages, for any number carrying a decimal point, and for a range where one member is ten or above. Ordinals follow the same threshold at 6.2, subject to an exception the guide states in terms, that the rule "does not always apply": an edition keeps its figure while "third country" and "third party" do not.
- The Stijlgids Nederlands of the same Directorate-General sets the line three places higher at 2.2.1: "Over het algemeen worden getallen tot en met twaalf, tientallen en ronde getallen daarboven in woorden weergegeven."
- Türk Dil Kurumu's Yazım Kuralları rule by domain instead. Figures are used in numbers relating to clock time, sums of money, measurement and statistical data, "saat, para tutarı, ölçü, istatistik verilere ilişkin sayılarda rakam kullanılır", and size is not mentioned.
- The Office québécois de la langue française does both. Its Banque de dépannage linguistique recommends nine as the limit, lists nine domains that take figures whatever their size, among them ages, times, measurements, percentages and sums of money, and adds a genre rule: in legal and literary texts numbers are written out throughout.
One institution therefore holds two incompatible thresholds in two of its own language departments, on a rule that reduces to a single integer, and two language authorities rule the class by a criterion neither guide uses. The tier is House because this record's examples rest on the guides; the class is Codified in Turkish and in the Quebec rule, and Examples built on either side would carry the value with them.
Genre is attested twice from opposite directions: the English guide notes that some legal documents write dates out in full, and the Quebec rule makes that general for legal texts. The two also contradict each other on adjacent numbers, the English guide spelling one out in "90 fifty-gram weights" where the Quebec rule prefers both in figures, in "7 des 18 groupes".
Consequences for translation
The conversion is determinate and the judgement that precedes it is not.
- A threshold is worthless without its authority. The same figure is correct English and incorrect Dutch inside one institution, so a finding that cites a threshold without naming whose it is cannot be acted on.
- The prior classification is the hard part. Whether a number is a quantity, a designator, a date, a measurement or a sum decides the outcome under every authority above, and nothing mechanical settles it.
- Genre overrides size. A legal instrument may spell out a number the same authority would set in figures elsewhere, so applying a threshold blindly to a contract or a judgment produces compliant-looking errors.
- Numbers that designate are retained rather than converted. A figure inside a title or an instrument number is not spelled out at any threshold, expressing no quantity.
Examples
EN>NL
- Source: 12 delegations were in favour, 7 against, and 6 abstained
- Target: twaalf delegaties waren voor, zeven tegen en zes onthielden zich
- Comment: The English guide's illustration of the rule for votes, where every number is a figure. All three fall at or below the Dutch threshold of twelve, so Stijlgids 2.2.1 spells all three out. The Dutch target is derived from that rule rather than copied from a printed instance. Nothing in the source signals the change.
EN>FR
- Source: the fifth day of the month of June 2004
- Target: le cinquième jour du mois de juin deux mille quatre
- Comment: The Quebec rule's printed illustration of its genre exception. The year is spelled out because the text is legal, not because it falls below any threshold; under the same authority's ordinary rule a four-digit year stands in figures. The genre decides, and it decides against the number.
References
- English Style Guide. Directorate-General for Translation, European Commission, eighth edition January 2016, file consulted 3 August 2026. Chapter 6 (Numbers), beginning at page 38, sections 6.1 (Writing out numbers) and 6.2 (Ordinal numbers).
- Türk Dil Kurumu, Yazım Kuralları, the page Sayıların Yazılışı, read on the institution's own page at tdk.gov.tr. The rule on numbers written in figures, cited by its wording; the page's printed examples are not reproduced.
- Banque de dépannage linguistique, "Principes d'écriture des nombres en lettres", article 25135, last updated 2022, and "Principes d'écriture des nombres en chiffres", article 21502, last updated 2019. Office québécois de la langue française.
- Stijlgids Nederlands. Directoraat-generaal Vertaling, Europese Commissie, vijfde uitgave mei 2025, last amended 21 October 2025. Section 2.2.1.