Oddbean new post about login | logout @5a43dd67 I agree. That's awful, I wouldn't want to read that. We have numbers for a reason. My style guide, as I recall, says to write it out only when it's short (they provide specific instances), but to use numbers otherwise.
@7b682b86 @5a43dd67 Generally, I agree, but sometimes, the words are part of the texture of the narrative. An example from A Memory of War and Solace: "Eight-hundred-year-old bones of tens of thousands of fallen soldiers nourished the land for miles around."
@568cb1e6 @5a43dd67 I agree. In the instance you shared, I'd have done the exact same thing. In all the books I've written, there are actually few, if any, instances where I use numbers. Characters, mostly, don't think in precise terms. Something is old or its hundreds of years old, or it's seven-hundred-years-old. Too, as you say, that has a poetic feel that numbers cannot capture.