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How do you read "10/10", as in "10/10, no notes"? it is a score! The "no notes" comes from the acting community, I think: you've done so well, that the director has no notes to give you to improve the scene.

Ten ten? Ten slash ten? Ten over ten? I've only seen it written and I have no idea how it is read aloud. Thank you.

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    Hi. What do you mean by "10/10, no notes"? Not sure I understand this at all. What is the context, what are you using 10/10 in reference to?
    – Billy Kerr
    Jun 22 at 12:19
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    Sorry, I've no idea. Without further context it is meaningless. Jun 22 at 13:04
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    For context, this is used as a response to seeing something online. So it's making a reference to whatever event/action/thing was being discussed.
    – Dan Getz
    Jun 22 at 13:16
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    I understand 10-4 (“Message received” and/or "Roger that" = "YES" in the context of radio communications). And 20/20 ("normal", but often used to mean "perfect" in the context of "vision" - how well someone can see). In both those cases, we just say the numbers themselves (but when written, we usually use - and / as given). I've never encountered OP's use of "10/10", so I don't know how it would normally be written, but ten out of ten sounds like a credible spoken version. Just ten ten would sound weird to me. Jun 22 at 14:39
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    @QuackE.Duck "10-4" comes from CB radio communications in North America. Most of the general public that know the term have encountered it through either cop shows or trucker shows, where sentences like "10-4, over and out." are not rare. Jun 22 at 20:55

5 Answers 5

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The traditional way to say that meaning of 10/10 is "ten out of ten". The literal meaning is that something has received a score of 10 out of a maximum possible score of ten. In the phrase "10/10, no notes", this is often used facetiously: where the speaker has not actually been asked to give a score or grade, and/or to mean the thing is bad or poorly done, not good or well done. I'm not aware if there's another way people pronounce "10/10" for this use, because I've only ever seen the "no notes" version in writing.

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    That's perfect, thank you. Yes, it is a score! I knew the meaning but not how to read it. The "no notes" comes from the acting community, I think: you've done so well, that the director has no notes to give you to improve the scene.
    – Cocobop
    Jun 22 at 13:47
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    Sarcastically? What’s sarcastic about it? Jun 23 at 3:03
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    @AustinHemmelgarn I suspect that is AmE specific as I have never heard it in BrE. Jun 23 at 8:20
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    @EspeciallyLime I don't recall hearing it in AmE either in the context of a score or rating, but in a context such as "Page 10/10" I would neither consider "ten of ten" informal nor expect to hear it read as anything other than "page ten of ten," also in the UK.
    – phoog
    Jun 23 at 10:16
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    There's no requirement that the phrase be used sarcastically, it can be used literally to denote high praise - it depends entirely on context. I don't see what could be considered "metaphorical" about its usage, it's simply applying a rating to something, not comparing it or likening it to any other thing. Jun 23 at 17:07
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This is a common way of writing a score, and we would say "ten out of ten". This could mean that ten questions were set and you got ten right (eg "I got ten out of ten on my school test!"). Ten is also a common denominator for scoring things in reviews, such as when a magazine reviews a movie (eg "This is the best movie ever! Ten out of ten!")

There could be other contexts though - for example, fractions are sometimes written this way (eg. a half could be written as 1/2, two-thirds as 2/3 etc) and so 10/10 could be "ten tenths". True, fractions are normally simplified to the lowest possible denominator (eg we would write 2/3, not 4/6), but sometimes when an item is irreversibly divided into equal parts (for example, a cake cut into 10 equal parts) we would stick to that number as the denominator, and so a context where we might say "ten tenths" is not impossible.

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  • Fractions were the first thing I thought of when I saw the title of the question (and my immediate answer to, “How would you read 10/10?” was, “One”), but the addition of “no notes” makes it clear that the reviewing score is the correct interpretation here. Jun 23 at 3:05
  • @JanusBahsJacquet Absolutely - no doubt about the context of the OP's example, which is why my second paragraph begins "There could be other contexts". I try to keep in mind that many questions come from non-native speakers and I wanted to make sure they didn't think that it would always be read that way.
    – Astralbee
    Jun 23 at 8:46
  • @JanusBahsJacquet 10/10 may be equal to 1 but it is not generally to be read as "one." For example, consider this sentence: "to add 3/10 to 7/10, we note that the denominators are the same and add the numerators, giving a result of 10/10, which is equal to 1."
    – phoog
    Jun 23 at 10:24
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    @phoog It was a somewhat tongue-in-cheek answer. Jun 23 at 10:36
  • @JanusBahsJacquet fair enough. I am somewhat sensitive to the possibility of things being taken out of context, or the context misconstrued. The second of these seems particularly relevant here on English Language Learners.
    – phoog
    Jun 23 at 10:43
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I offer this as a slight disagreement with Dan's answer.

"10/10" is definitely pronounced "ten out of ten" indicating that one has scored full marks. However "10/10 no notes" is typically higher praise.

This type of grading is common in an English class. As an example, the assignment would be to write a 3 page paper on some topic. The teacher has a grading rubric to ensure that the student is writing up to their grade level. A "10/10" means that they have met this standard. However it is still common for the teacher to leave comments on how the student could improve their writing in the future. A "10/10 no notes!" on the other hand indicates that not only is the student writing to their grade level, but the teacher cannot see any room for improvement and is praising the student's work!

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In the context of a review or evaluation of how good something was or how much you liked it, 10/10 is normally pronounced "ten out of ten", indicating a perfect score, the full ten "points" on a scale of one or zero to ten.

The "no notes" comes from the acting community, I think: you've done so well, that the director has no notes to give you to improve the scene.

Yes, precisely, that's what the "no notes" phrase means in a review or evaluation of something, or in general commenting on the quality of anything. It's used to emphasize that you can't think of a way it could have been better.

It's a bit of a meme to add that in cases where the person saying it is not in a position to give feedback to the people whose work they're rating. Including when it's a natural phenomenon, e.g. a meteor shower.

You'd usually only hear this spoken aloud when the goal is comedic effect, following the form of an online review in a different medium.


A related meme is "10/10, would visit again", replacing "visit" or "buy" with a verb appropriate to the thing being reviewed. Like if you fell off something into a safety net, "10/10, would fall on again".

Again, other than an actual online customer-review page for a product, restaurant, hiking trail, or whatever, you'd usually only hear or see this done for comedic effect. To communicate the information without trying to be funny, most people would just say something like "it was perfect", "worked great", or "I fully recommend it".

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Later addition: some data from Google n-grams and just plain googling around:

---+ ORIGINAL

The people who say "ten out of ten" are correct, but it is certainly not the only way that an English speaker would say this.

IMHO saying "ten out of ten" is most appropriate when there are 10 discrete items, e.g. 10 questions that you've got correct.

It is slightly less appropriate when answering something like a customer satisfaction survey, e.g. "how happy are you with this website, on a scale of one to 10". "I gave them ten out of ten stars", but also "I rate them ten on ten", eliding the "I gave them...stars" or "I rate them..." parts.

---+ LATER

I was a bit surprised at how adamant people were that they knew only "ten out of ten", and that they had never heard "ten on ten", "ten of ten", "ten over ten", or "ten slash ten".

So I did what one does: look at Google n-grams, and just search the web for uses.

---++ Google n-grams

Google n-grams confirm that "10 out of 10" is significantly more common. Roughly 100X more common than "10 of 10", and 600X more common than "10 on 10", for the settings on my screen right now (American English 2019, 1800-2019).

"10 on 10" is absent in the British English corpus. Which is consistent with what some of you are saying, although I could swear it was my good old English dad who taught me "10 on 10", saying that that was how they talked about a perfect grade at his English grammar school, which was founded in the 14th century.

"10 out of 10" only started becoming relatively common circa 1920. No, I'm not that old :-)

In the very 1st query I entered, "10 out of 10" only pulled ahead of "10 of 10" circa 1980. So I was about to say "this is generational". However, although I have captured that screenshot, running the query on my iPhone, I have not been able to reproduce it on a large screen. And on the iPhone there was so much over printing and poor rendering that something might have been messed up. Plus, of course, the earlier you go for infrequent phrases, the less data. And I haven't investigated context more fully - they might have been saying "ten on ten" for some completely different reason.

It doesn't seem worthwhile posting the graphs, because you can reproduce easily at https://books.google.com/ngrams.

---++ web search

As for googling, of course "10 out of 10" is far more common.

The Urban Dictionary says "ten on ten" is "an expression used when receiving a pleasant surprise, or when one discovers something that they find remarkable." Somewhat aligned with my usage.

There are a few queries and responses where people say «I suspect that "ten on ten" is an Indian equivalent of the British (and American) "ten out of ten"». Perhaps I picked it up from Indian friends. (I'll bet many readers are not familiar with the «French style» quotation marks or guilemets.)

Apparently "M on N" is drug terminology. Doesn't apply to me.

---+ Rationalization

Hey, it may not be a form you are familiar with, but it's shorter, and everybody knows that in English shorter eventually wins. Eventually. Neologisms are not just for Shakespeare! Although course I don't want to lead an English Language Learner astray.

'ten out of ten' <-- "I got ten out of ten questions correct"

'ten on ten' <-- "I rate them ten on a scale of one to ten"

and further afield:

If you have spent a lot of time reviewing documents and slide sets, you will often see at the bottom or top of the page "page M of N", e.g. "page 4 of 10" or "page 10 of 10" for the last page. Sometimes abbreviated "4/10" or "10/10".

Some have suggested that "M of N" is a short form of "M out of N", dropping the "out".

---+ ORIGINAL PERSONAL

Personally, I usually say "ten slash ten". But that's in part because my speech recognition software produces 10/10 with numbers when I say slash, but "ten out of ten" with words if I say "out of" or "on",

Canadian English speaker, US resident many years. For that matter, my speech recognition software is USA.

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    I don’t know if ‘ten on ten’ is a dialectal (Canadian?) variant, but I’ve never seen or heard it before, and it is definitely far less common than ‘ten out of ten’, which is in no way “slightly less appropriate”. ‘Ten slash ten’ may work when dictating to speech recognition software, but actual human beings would likely not even understand what was meant. Jun 23 at 10:42
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    @JanusBahsJacquet agreed. I was thinking that "ten on ten" sounded slightly less off if I imagine it with a Canadian accent, but that could be explained by any of a number of unrelated phenomena. It just occurred to me, though, that the French use "sur" (usually meaning "on") in phrases such as "vingt-quatre heures sur vingt-quatre" (24 hours out of 24, or, more idiomatically, 24 hours a day). Perhaps Canadian English has been influenced by this usage in Canadian French.
    – phoog
    Jun 23 at 10:47
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    I have also never heard "ten on ten" before (Northeast USA)
    – Ezekiel
    Jun 23 at 20:12
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    @PeterCordes Pretty certain it’s not British either. There do seem to be a small number of actual uses of the phrase on Google (and unfortunately an awful lot of what look like small businesses to dredge through to find them), so it appears to exist somewhere – just not sure where. Jun 24 at 1:56
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    @JanusBahsJacquet: Yes, I am an anglophone from Quebec. Google translates both English forms, "ten out of ten" and "ten on ten" to French "dix sur dix", and I did quite a bit of schooling in French, receiving graded papers and exams.
    – Krazy Glew
    Jun 24 at 3:35

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