Number to Words Converter

Write the whole amount, then the currency, then the fractional part, then the word only — for example one thousand two hundred and thirty-four dollars and fifty-six cents only. The closing only is not decoration: it stops anything being added to the end of the line after signing. It also matters that the words are right, because where the words and the figures on a cheque disagree, most banking law treats the words as the true amount.

How the digits are grouped, and everything follows from that. International grouping runs in threes all the way up, so each scale word is a thousand times the last: thousand, million, billion. The Indian system groups the first three digits and then in pairs, so after thousand each step is only a hundred times the last: thousand, lakh, crore. That is why a million is ten lakh rather than one of anything, and why the same number is written 15,00,000 in one place and 1,500,000 in the other.

Both are correct in their own place. British and Indian English include the and; American English leaves it out. Neither is a mistake, and the choice is offered here rather than assumed. On a cheque the and between the major and minor amounts is standard everywhere, since it separates the pounds from the pence rather than joining parts of one number.

Digit by digit after the point: 3.14 is three point one four, not three point fourteen. That is how it is said in speech and how it is written on a form. The other reading is offered because a measurement is occasionally said the other way, but the digit-by-digit version is the safe default and the one a bank will expect.

Up to the largest number a computer can hold exactly, which is a little over nine quadrillion. Beyond that the digits themselves become unreliable, so rather than writing out words for a number it cannot represent, it says nothing. In the Indian system it keeps counting in crore above a crore — a budget figure is two lakh crore, not two kharab, because those older words are archaic enough that using them would confuse rather than clarify.

Because Hindi, Marathi, Tamil and most other Indian languages have a distinct, irregular word for every number up to a hundred rather than a rule that generates them. Producing those from memory would give a page that looks authoritative and is wrong in places nobody would check, which is worse than not offering them. English is here in both numbering systems and both dialects, and every conversion is verified by reading it back.