MEPX
Chapter 9 of 10All chapters
  1. 1What punctuation is for
  2. 2Commas
  3. 3Colons and semicolons
  4. 4Apostrophes
  5. 5Dashes, hyphens and brackets
  6. 6Quotation marks
  7. 7Sentence endings
  8. 8Lists and bullets
  9. 9Numbers, dates and abbreviations
  10. 10Checking punctuation

Chapter 9 of 10

Numbers, dates and abbreviations

Small conventions.

Common practice

Spell out numbers under ten in prose. Use a comma or thin space as a thousands separator. Date formats differ by country, so name the month in international writing.

  • 2026-09-02 is unambiguous everywhere; 09/02/2026 is not.
  • Full stops in abbreviations are decreasing: US and UK rather than U.S.

Ranges

An en dash marks a range: 10 to 20 or 10 pages. Being consistent matters more than which convention you pick.