Talk:101 (number)

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Oh dear, what to say about this? One hundred and one is improper English; it should be simply One hundred one. Unfortunately this mistake has been carried over into all the following numbers. --Eequor 14:30, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Oh dear. No it isn't improper English. It is English as spoken by the English. See talk:1001 (number) talk:102 (number) etc..

Ugh. It's an unsightly misuse of and, especially in such constructions as one-hundred-and-first. And needlessly separates the number into a list when it should be kept whole. Perhaps this indicates a need for separate uk. and us. editions of Wikipedia, rather than pretending English is a single language. --Eequor 18:12, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Well I'm afraid that this is merely your subjective opinion, to my ear (and I think most Britons) someone saying "one hundred one" sound weird and like a foreigner with a poor grasp of the language. Mintguy (T) 10:04, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)~

It's worth pointing out that the English language article claims:

English has lingua franca status, due to the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the United States of America and to a lesser extent that of the United Kingdom.

There's an argument in there that American English is the dominant form and should be given preference, but that's just POV and US-centric besides. --Eequor 18:24, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It should be changed because - I think if the British Empire had collasped after the American revolution, I suspect that Spanish or French would have become the lingua franca. Mintguy (T)

Ambiguity in first paragraph

It currently says "101 is the smallest number requiring thirteen letters in English." As far as I've understood, this could mean two things.

101 is the smallest number of those which require thirteen letters, in English.
101 is the smallest number in that it requires thirteen letters, in English. (in this case, the original sentence would need a comma, but there's already missing another comma so I guess the author didn't use punctuation.)

I think we should find a proper way to write this. I don't know what the correct statement is, so I can't rewrite it :).

--MathiasRav 16:50, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think the paragraph means to say: 101 is the smallest number of those which require thirteen letters, in English.

"One hundred one" (101) = 13 letters. "Two hundred one" (201) = 13 letters but a bigger number. And there are numbers requiring less letters than 13, so it can't mean the second statement.

Anyway, I wouldn't know if 101 is really the smallest number of all numbers with 13 letters. There needs to be a source given for this statement. I don't know if this can be found in the book from the "Reference" section (Wells, D. The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers London: Penguin Group. (1987): page 133). And what about negative numbers? Does "minus" count to the amount of letters? Bisco 20:30, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

101 is the smallest number requiring thirteen letters in English is false. Counterexamples include negative seven (-7), minus nineteen (-19), seven over nine (7/9), and one point seven (1.7). Of course one can modify the original statement to say smallest non-negative integer and go back to the linguistic debate. -- 17:51, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

101 - the basics

Does anybody know why 101 is used to indicate that basic information on a topic will be provided? Haven't found anything on that phrase's origin.

Right, I came here to ask that same question. One would expect 102 or 201 to be the next level up. I asked this at the humanities ref desk. DirkvdM 08:14, 18 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What's the British spelling rule?

OK, I definitely don't want to get into an argument over which of British/American is correct or better, as they did above. But as an American, I want to learn what the British rule for inserting "and" is. Every time after "N hundred ..."? Do you do it for thousands, too -- one thousand and one? Millions and up? Do you do it for every grouping, like "one million and one thousand and one hundred and one"? I'm genuinely curious.