Number to Words – Amount in Words

How to use the number to words converter

Type a figure in the left box and the words appear on the right as you type. Type words instead and you get the figure back — the direction is worked out from what you enter, so there is no mode to switch. That is the whole of it, which is what a number to words converter ought to be.

• Number to words. Enter 12500 and read it back as twelve thousand five hundred. This is the numbers in words english direction most people arrive for.
• Words to number. Paste twelve thousand five hundred and get 12500. The words to numbers direction understands lakh and crore as well as million and billion, so words to number conversion works whichever system the writer used.
• Pick the system. International gives thousand, million and billion. Indian gives thousand, lakh and crore, and regroups the digits to match.
• Switch to Currency for cheque wording — the amount in words style, which puts the currency where that country's cheque expects it and closes with Only.
• Keep it. Copy the result, or press Send back to push it into the input and convert it the other way.

Indian and international — why 1,00,000 is one lakh

The two systems spell digits identically. What differs is where they cut the number up.

International grouping cuts the digits into threes. Indian grouping takes the last three and then pairs, which is why the commas fall in different places: 1,00,000 rather than 100,000. Change the system on this page and the grouped figure under the result moves with it, so you can see the difference rather than take it on trust. This is what a search for number to words in indian rupees is really after — not a different spelling, a different grouping.

Writing an amount in words on a cheque

Switch the style to Currency and the wording changes to what the local bank expects. An Indian cheque has Rupees printed before the blank line, so the currency goes first — and a dollar or sterling cheque prints it at the end of the line instead, so there the amount goes first. The tool follows whichever applies to the currency you pick, and closes with Only:

• 12500 → Rupees Twelve Thousand Five Hundred Only
• 12500.50 → Rupees Twelve Thousand Five Hundred and Fifty Paise Only
• 100000 → Rupees One Lakh Only — the amount in words in indian rupees, and the one lakh rupees in words people check before signing
• 7896 in dollars → Seven Thousand Eight Hundred and Ninety-Six Dollars Only

That closing Only is not decoration. It marks the end of the amount so that nothing can be written after it, which is the whole reason banks ask for the figure in words at all. Title Case is the usual choice on a cheque. If your form wants the amount in words capital letters instead, the Letter case selector has UPPER CASE.

Hyphens, “and”, and the bits people get wrong

• Hyphens. Every compound number from twenty-one to ninety-nine takes one. So 99 in words is ninety-nine, and 42 is forty-two. Below twenty and at round tens there is no hyphen.
• The word “and”. British and Indian English put it before the last part: one hundred and five. American English drops it: one hundred five. Both are right in their own place, so it is a switch rather than a rule.
• Zero. A lone zero is zero, not oh and not blank.
• Decimals. In plain style they are read digit by digit — 12.50 is twelve point five zero, not twelve point fifty.

Very large figures

The digits here are handled as text rather than as a machine number. That sounds like a detail until you paste something long: past about sixteen digits a spreadsheet quietly rounds the figure off and spells the rounded version, which is exactly the sort of wrong answer that looks right. A thirty-digit figure is spelled here digit for digit. The only ceiling is thirty-six digits in both systems, where the international scale runs out at decillion, and the page says so rather than guessing. The Indian system has no separate name above crore in everyday English, so larger figures are counted in crores — one lakh crore, the way a newspaper writes it, rather than arab and kharab, which belong to Hindi.

What this tool does not do

It is a number to words english converter, and only English. It does not translate figures into Hindi, Marathi, Tamil or any other language, and it does not convert currencies — typing a dollar figure will not give you rupees, because that needs a live exchange rate and this page deliberately talks to nothing. It also does not generate an Excel formula; it converts here, in the page.