Can I start my email with numbers?

Question

I have sent an email to my client yesterday which starts with this

10 of 15 items we discussed yesterday are resolved and the 5 are in progress.

For some reason I feel an email should not start with number (I think I have been told to avoid very long ago). I wrote emails which starts with number without using 'of' something like 'Ten items have been resolved yesterday'.

So I changed it to this.

Out of 15; which we discussed yesterday, 10 are resolved and the 5 are in progress

But again, I was not confident of punctuation, so I sent the first one. Can some one please help me correct this if its wrong?

Answer 1

1. When discussing with customers and / or suppliers, it is highly recommended to use formal communication.

2. Regardless of the type of communication (formal or informal), sentences which start with numbers look awkward. There is always a way to form a sentence with numbers, and avoid having a number as the first element.

Exceptions:

• the numbers are written as text (two instead of 2);

  Three Men in a Boat

• you actually present a formula, and there is no real sentence

You can use any article / book as a reference. I do not remember any of them starting sentences with numbers represented as digits.

Answer 2

If you write the words for the numbers there is no issue but starting a sentence with digits is not recommended.

Ten of [the] fifteen items we discussed yesterday are resolved and the [other] five are in progress.

Any formal communication (business to business communication for example) should always use the words for the numbers unless the numbers are very large.

Answer 3

In informal writing like an email, starting a sentence with numbers is acceptable. In formal writing, it is considered bad form.