Writing an amount on a cheque
The conventions vary by country and a few rules hold nearly everywhere.
- End with only, as in twenty-five thousand rupees only. It marks the end so nothing can be added afterwards.
- Fill the remaining space with a line, for the same reason.
- Match the figures exactly. A mismatch means the cheque is queried or returned, and the words usually win.
- Write the paise or cents if there are any, and say so explicitly rather than leaving a decimal to interpretation.
- Use the local convention. Lakh and crore in India, thousand and million elsewhere.
The same rules apply to contracts and invoices, where an amount is conventionally given in figures and then repeated in words in brackets.
The two scales side by side
The same figure, grouped both ways, which is the quickest way to see where the systems diverge.
They agree up to a thousand and part company immediately after. The point of divergence is one hundred thousand, which is a lakh in one system and has no single word in the other.
Indian digit grouping differs as well. A figure written 1,00,000 in India is 100,000 elsewhere: after the first three digits, the separators fall every two digits rather than every three. That is why an Indian invoice can look mistyped to a reader outside India and vice versa.
Writing amounts in a contract
The convention in legal drafting is to give the figure and then repeat it in words in brackets, as in 45,000 rupees (forty-five thousand rupees only). It is a redundancy on purpose: two independent statements of the same amount, so an alteration to one is visible against the other.
Where they conflict, most jurisdictions treat the words as controlling, on the reasoning that words are harder to alter convincingly than digits. That is the whole basis of the convention and the reason it has outlived the era of handwritten ledgers.
Keep the two consistent to the last decimal. A contract where the figure says 45,000.50 and the words say forty-five thousand is not a small error, because the words are the ones that will be enforced.
Where the hyphens and the word and belong
Two conventions cause more argument than they deserve. Compound numbers between twenty-one and ninety-nine take a hyphen: forty-two, not forty two. That holds wherever they appear, including inside a larger number, so 1,342 is one thousand three hundred and forty-two.
The word and is British usage and sits before a remainder below one hundred. One hundred and five, but one thousand five hundred rather than one thousand and five hundred. American usage drops it entirely, giving one hundred five, which reads oddly to a British ear and is perfectly standard in the United States.
This tool follows British usage, which is what Indian, British, Australian and most Commonwealth banking expects. If you are writing for an American reader, remove the and by hand.
Decimals are written as a separate phrase rather than read digit by digit. An amount of 1,250.75 becomes one thousand two hundred and fifty and seventy-five paise, not one two five zero point seven five. On a cheque the second form is not accepted at all.
