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My sentence:

  1. The teacher made us read from page number 10 to 15.
  2. The teacher made us read from page numbers 10 to 15.

Which one above is correct?
Is the sentence above grammatically correct?
Should I use the plural of page number i.e. 'page numbers', as we are not talking about a single page here? Which is more appropriate here- to or up to?

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  • Ranges are normally specified from [the] first to [the] last (each "endpoint" being singular). So if I didn't know it came from a non-native speaker, I'd assume your second example implied something different. Specifically, #1 probably means all of us were required to read the entire range of 6 pages (probably, silently, to ourselves), whereas I might interpret #2 as meaning that some or all of us where required to stand up in class and read parts of the specified range of text out loud (i.e. - the difference would mainly turn on read to oneself / out loud).
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Feb 11, 2022 at 11:26
  • Note the different preposition usages in He read from the book (probably, to his audience) and He read from page 1 to page 4.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Feb 11, 2022 at 11:31
  • The shorter the better. The shortest is "... to read pages 10 to 15."
    – Tuffy
    Commented Feb 11, 2022 at 12:32

2 Answers 2

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Of the two alternatives sentence 1 is better. It would be clearer as The teacher made us read from page number 10 to page number 15, but your contraction is acceptable.

It is very common to leave out the word "number" in such sentences. This would change the first sentence to The teacher made us read from page 10 to page 15. Sentence 2 could be changed similarly to The teacher made us read pages 10 to 15.

In the first sentence we use singular (page or number) because it talks individually about the start (which is singular) and the end (which is also singular). A sentence talking about multiple pages needs to specify the range, like my version of sentence 2.

For sentence 1 you can use "to" or "up to"; it does not matter as pages are always read in numerical order. On the other hand "up to" does not work for sentence 2.

There are a couple of other issues with the second sentence. Firstly it can be misunderstood as a request to read only page numbers. Secondly the word "from" used with a range can mean a selection from the range as in I read selected paragraphs from pages 10 to 15.

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Teachers often say

Turn to page 10
Open your books on page 15

Adding "number" is redundant. We know that 10 and 15 are numbers.

When studying or reading aloud more than a single page, it's quite common to say or hear

Read pages 10 to 15

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