Yesterday I began a review of numbers in English.  In yesterday’s post I focused on cardinal and ordinal numbers below 100.  Today we are going to focus on numbers, and how to read and say numbers, that are over a hundred.  When expressing large numbers (numbers that are more than one hundred),  numbers are read in groups of hundreds.  Numbers grouped into hundred are the three numbers in a row beginning from the right-hand side of the number.  These are the common groupings of number by hundreds: hundreds (100), thousands (1,000), millions (1,000,000), and billions (1,000,000,000).

There are three important notes to keep in mind about big numbers before proceeding any further in our discussion.
1)  In English these large groups of numbers are separated (after the third number) by a comma (,) not by a period (.).
2) In English when you read/say large numbers like these you do not use the plural -s at the end of the number, even though these numbers are obviously plural.  For example: we say “two thousand” NOT “two thousands“.
3)  British English speaker always put the word ‘and’ between ‘hundred’ and any following number, while American English doing this is a matter of personal preference.  Here is an example of this difference.

British English: 267 = two hundred and sixty-seven

American English: 267 = two hundred sixty seven.

Yesterday I covered with you the names of groups of numbers from 1-100, these include:  tens (1-10), teens (numbers 11-19), twenties (20-29), thirties (30-29), forties (40-49), fifties, (50-59), sixties (60-69), seventies (70-79), eighties (80-89), and nineties (90-99).  Today I will cover with you how to say numbers that range from 100 (one hundred) to over 1,000,000,000 (one billion).  I have chosen just a few examples to write out in each of these categories because the rules for how to say numbers in English do not have many exceptions (the numbers eleven and twelve are the only numbers that do not go along with the rules) so you should be able to see from these examples the pattern for how to say large numbers in English.  If you have any questions about saying these larger numbers please ask them in the comments section below!

Hundreds
350 – three hundred fifty
528 – five hundred twenty eight

Thousands
1,012 – one thousand twelve
15,000 – fifteen thousand
786,450 – seven hundred eighty-six thousand four hundred fifty

Millions
1,000,100 – one million one hundred
2,450,000 – two million four hundred fifty thousand
222,700,011 – two hundred twenty-two million seven hundred eleven

Billions
1,000,000,001 – one billion one
3,222,700,011 – thee billion two hundred twenty-two million seven hundred eleven
100,000,678,000 – one hundred billion six hundred seventy-eight thousand