Use of numbers

LittleStar

LittleStar

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This may be a silly question, but we should all be allowed a few of them.

I just started reading The Hunger Games, and while I have a few things about it that I would be intrigued to discuss, (but I think first person show/tell and exposition have been covered to death) one thing stood out and almost annoyed me.

She lists of the different districts she uses numbers 'District 12' for example, but at least twice so far, she has started the sentence with numbers but no district. Both of them are fine, but her consistency lapses at these two points. She writes "Three, 4, 5" and Eight, 9, 10"

Are you not allowed to start a sentence with a numerical number? Is this some strange grammar rule that I don't know about? Or is it justa mistake in consistency?
 
I thought at first "What is she doing?", but apparently she's following the rules here, which I'd never heard before (though they are intended more for academic prose):

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/numbers.htm

The inconsistency does look strange, though.

ETA: and actually, even going by those rules, "District 12" should be "District Twelve". I was referring more to the lists.
 
Yes, it's pretty standard that a number should be spelled out if it begins a sentence, unless it's a year. The others should be consistent, although I must confess that it must not have bothered me because I don't recall noticing it in The Hunger Games. And I'm a person who gets bothered by things.
 
I don't remember noticing it when I read Hunger Games either. It looks odd to see the district numbers written out, I never gave much thought to it before but numbers are generally always written as words in creative writing. It is odd that she chose to put them numerically, but then stick to the rule about not starting sentences numerically.
 
That's a lot of numerical rules. I'm wonder how many I actually use correctly...

I assumed it was a beginning of the sentence thing, but it just looked so strange on the page surrounded by figures. I dont think i would have looked twice if it was either/or, but both looked wrong to me, despite being apparently grammatically correct.
As you said Sleepy, it seems odd to bend one rule but not another, especially as it seems to me the second rule needs to be altered because of the first.
 
Sometimes I record the numbers (on the page) in more than one way.

For instance, one of the military units mentioned is the 123rd Corp and it is written thus in the dialogue of someone who is not a member of that corps (or even the same branch of the armed forces). However, the PoV character is in that corps, and she and her fellow corps members call it the Twelve-Three Corps, and so I write it this way in the (her) narrative.
 
LittleStar said:
This may be a silly question, but we should all be allowed a few of them.

I just started reading The Hunger Games, and while I have a few things about it that I would be intrigued to discuss, (but I think first person show/tell and exposition have been covered to death) one thing stood out and almost annoyed me.

She lists of the different districts she uses numbers 'District 12' for example, but at least twice so far, she has started the sentence with numbers but no district. Both of them are fine, but her consistency lapses at these two points. She writes "Three, 4, 5" and Eight, 9, 10"

Are you not allowed to start a sentence with a numerical number? Is this some strange grammar rule that I don't know about? Or is it justa mistake in consistency?
Click to expand...

Every style guide I've seen makes that clear that you should never start a sentence with an arabic numeral. Numbers should always be spelled out when at the start of a sentence. According to Chicago Manual of Style, when you use numbers zero through one-hundred, they should be spelled out. Anything higher than one-hundred, 101 for example, should be in arabic numerals. There are some exceptions for numbers as names, and many maths exceptions, though you still should not begin a sentence with an arabic numeral.
 
Can you start a sentence with Roman numerals or is that simply crazy talk on my part?
 
1st of all, I didn't know there were so many rules on numbers. 2ndly, I hope I'm following them all! :D
 
Ursa major said:
??

And II = 2
Click to expand...

Sorry. A bit abstract, what I wrote. The point is that "I" can be a Roman numeral or a personal pronoun? And just to confuse matters more, "I" means "one" in Roman numerals and "one" can be a perfectly legitimate pronoun (the impersonal pronoun) in English although using it in precisely that way in the sentence I wrote would be grammatically inaccurate. :)
 
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