Writing numbers – quick tip

Posted December 8th, 2008 by David Hamill

When you include numbers on your website, use numerics rather than spelling out the word. It’s quicker for your user to digest. It also works better when the number is the main thing your user is looking for.

Try it out for yourself. Go to the Wikipedia page on Tigers and find the approximate number of cubs in a litter. It’s quite difficult to find because the page is big. But now try to find the average number of hunts a tiger makes before it tends to get a kill. It’s even harder because the figure is written as a word and you’re scanning the page for a number.

Phone numbers

You can improve the findability of phone numbers even further by making them bold.

What are quick tips?

My quick tips are bits of advice I’ve given lots of times, but they’re not really worth writing a big article about.

Tags: quick tips, web writing