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How would you put three and a half hours in numbers?

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    more context and evidence of prior research please.
    – James K
    Commented Feb 1, 2019 at 20:08
  • Welcome to ELL.SE. There are several different ways to represent three and a half hours in numbers, from 3:30 to 3h30m to 3.5 and so on and so forth. Which one you would want or need depends on the context; why are you trying to use numbers rather than words, in what kind of writing, for what kind of audience? Also, have you consulted any references as to how measures of time are represented in English? I strongly encourage you to take the site tour and review the help center for additional guidance on writing strong, answerable questions.
    – choster
    Commented Feb 1, 2019 at 20:19

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There are a number of ways. Assuming this is about typing rather than handwriting: The most readable way is to use the Unicode character for one-half:

3½ hours.

If you don't have easy access to the Unicode character set, then it's common to put a space between the whole numbers and the fractional numbers:

3 1/2 hours.

Naturally you can also use decimal numbers, but this sounds more scientific or technical:

3.5 hours

I expect these are common to many languages (not just English), and I'm not sure how it would be different in another language with a different primary alphabet.

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  • And of course, this has nothing to do with time. You'd use those same notations if you were talking about three and a half of anything.
    – Canadian Yankee
    Commented Feb 1, 2019 at 18:01
  • 2
    You can write 3 hours 30 minutes, 3h 30m, 3 hrs 30 mins, etc.
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Feb 1, 2019 at 18:10

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