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In Oxford word skills book "and" added before the last number

101 : one hundred and one

140: one hundred and forty

you can see in this image

I know that can say without "and"

but I want to know standard and acceptable sentence in international exams

one hundred and one or one hundred one

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2 Answers 2

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In my experience (native AmE speaker from the mid-Atlantic region of the US), both ways are perfectly acceptable in spoken American English, with no real preference one way or the other in general. Both ELU.SE and Language Log seem to suggest that "and" may be more common outside of North America, in which case it would be the safer option, but either should be fully understood. There do appear to be some claims online that "and" is not correct in "proper" English when saying a number; in my experience, that is blatantly incorrect, and "one hundred and one" is entirely acceptable at any level of formality (this is backed up by both links.

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    I can confirm in British English "a hundred one" sounds decidedly odd. So if "a hundred and one" is acceptable in AmE, that's definitely the better option.
    – abligh
    Commented Jun 26, 2015 at 8:56
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In modern edited English one does not use "and" in the middle of a number. 101 is read as "one-hundred-one"; 1,250 is "one-thousand-two-hundred-fifty" or "twelve-hundred-fifty", though occasionally in colloquial oral expression, "and" is interpolated.

In poetic English, "and" is often added, as in "four score and seven years ago" in Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, or "four and twenty blackbirds". However, it's best to omit "and" when reading numbers aloud: http://dwb.unl.edu/Teacher/NSF/C10/C10Links/math.about.com/library/mathfiles/bl044-01a.htm : "Never use the word “and” when reading or writing whole numbers."

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    That's news to me (native AmE speaker from the mid-Atlantic area). "And" is perfectly acceptable when reading a whole number; the linked site's claim (that "and" means where the decimal point is placed) is incorrect in my experience. Source generalizing the claim (from actual linguists): Language Log
    – cpast
    Commented Mar 3, 2015 at 5:23
  • +1 I recall in junior high school getting drilled in math class how to "say" numbers correctly and we would get counted wrong if we said "and" anywhere but at the decimal point. This agrees with the instructions in the link that @DrMoishe Pippik has posted.
    – user6951
    Commented Mar 3, 2015 at 6:40

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