10 Ways Brits and Americans Use Numbers Very Differently 

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Zip codes are actually 9 characters long, but the last 4 are only used for extreme specificity

People here in the US do say "OH" for zero. But I guess more interchangeably than a British person would.

US Postal worker here, the postal zip code is eleven digits, 5 digit zip code, 4 digit route and stop number, and then the last 2 digits of your house number, but most people only use the 5 or 9 digit codes. The bar code on the bottom of the front of the envelope will have all 11 embedded in it.

5:00 - In the 90s, I only used a 7 digit number when calling locally. 10 digits caused a long distance charge.

A spoken "oh" in place of a zero is quite common in the US, especially between other digits in a string. Examples may include: The 405 freeway in California is verbally called "the four oh five". Engine sizes in older cars, referred to by their displacement in cubic inches. Ford three oh two. Chevy three oh five. Chevy four oh nine (Beach Boys song about it). Cleaning products. "Formula 409" is advertised as "formula four oh nine". Airplanes. Cessna two oh six. Boeing seven oh seven. Military time (slightly slang). "Reveille will be at oh four hundred." Officially called zero four hundred, but "zero" is commonly spoken as "oh" in these instances. Fahrenheit temperatures above 100°. "The high today will be one oh four" is interchangeable with "the high today will be a hundred and four". Zip codes. I remember back in the 80s and 90s, you could write to MTV Studios in New York for whatever reason. They would put the zip code for a mailing address up on the TV screen while verbally reading it, and "10016" was always spoken as "one double oh one six". Many folks also say "oh" instead of "zero" in phone numbers, or any string of numbers where a letter would not be used. It's just verbal shorthand, as "oh" rolls much more quickly off the tongue than "zero" does.

As an engineer (American), I learned to write a seven with the horizontal stroke through the middle to distinguish it from a one, and a zero with a diagonal stroke to distinguish it from the letter o.

O was very common when I was growing up. Everyone I knew, for some reason, would say O unless they were specifically talking about math. For example, remember the tv show 90210? Nobody called it nine zero two one zero. I still heard it often. Like if you're saying that it is 5:05, you say O.

Under the old British system a thousand million was called a milliard.

In many places I’ve lived in Florida we also say “Oh” in place of “zero” when reading out numbers. For instance, radio stations: “one-oh-two-point-five.” But if you are reading something with numbers and letters mixed it’s expected to specify whether it’s an actual O or 0

The ZIP in ZIP code is an acronym for "Zone Improvement Plan" and is often seen capitalized for that reason. It is actually relatively recent in the grand scheme of things, being fully implemented in 1963. As for phone numbers, those used to be different as well; they were seven digits with the first 2 numbers represented by letters. The Glenn Miller song _PEnnsylvania 6-5000_ is a reference to this -- and yes, that's how it's spelled! As more and more numbers were assigned, it was decided to expand with area codes and dk away with the letter assignations. When I was a kid we only had to dial the 7 digit number if calling locally. But there are so many numbers now -- in fact, I had to switch numbers last year and I got a new area code, though I have lived here all my life! The times, they are a-chaingin'.

I work in IT. We use date format yyyyMMdd. That way you can sort dates.

Just a quick correction: The school years system is only used by England and Wales. Scotland actually removes reception year so they are one ahead of England, but they also denote P1-P7 as primary school and S1-S6 (usually said as "1st year") as secondary school. Its interesting that within britain we have different classifications for school numbers

Using O for zero is used often in the us as well. It may be regional but it's used in Missouri

The 24 hour clock in the UK isn’t military time - it’s railway time. Not that we ever refer to it like that.

On postcodes, one intersting thing about British postcodes is that in most cases the last character changes depending on which side of the road your house is on. So as long as you're posting within the UK, all you really need is the house/flat number and postcode.

The fact that you called "Kindergarten Cop" of all things a documentary made me chuckle, and I've been having an oddly crummy morning. Thanks Laurence!

I grew up in the US calling 9:30 as half past 9. When I was a kid in the 50's, my phone was a party line, that is several people got their calls on one line. You had to listen for the number of rings before you picked up to make sure it was your call.

The difference in house numbers reflects a difference in city planning: the UK didn't, but the US did. US house numbers are (roughly) X/Y coordinates, telling you how far it is from the north/south or east/west axis, rather than simply numbering buildings sequentially from one end of the street. In large urban areas and surrounding rural areas, 5-digit numbers are commonplace. City streets named with numbers are the same thing; there might not be a 17th Street, but 18th Street will be the same distance from 16th Street as 14th Street. (Different cities use different scales.) In the UK it's not unusual for a road to change street names where it changes direction or it crosses another road, and the numbers start over. But in the US the opposite routinely happens: Maple Street might stop when it reaches some obstacle such as a park or river, then continue on the other side (with the numbers continuing according to distance). Gaps of miles can separate Maple Street in one neighborhood with Maple Street in another then again in yet another, which have the same name simply because they line up on a map. For this reason it's very important to pay attention to direction indicators on street addresses: 4523 N Oak Avenue is nowhere near 4517 S Oak Avenue.

"Naught" was used in the past. If you go back and watch old Beverly Hillbillies episodes Jethro frequently says "Naught plus one is one, carry the naught" and similar silly things.

Your clock observations are specific to the Midwest. Here in the Northeast, "What time is it?" leads to, "Half past."

Thank you for combing your hair at 1:00 in. That curly cue was driving me nuts!!!

As an American, I picked up the habit of crossing my 7s about 15 years ago. I was working in shipping in an International company, and we would receive parts from European divisions with the quantities usually in their handwriting. I slowly adopted the style over time. In the interest of consistency.

As an American I put a hash mark in 7 and the letter Z. This stemmed from my physics classes in college, university to you Laurence, where the symbols, numbers and letters needed to be differentiated.

I've been using military time for years. It's easier for me to understand, especially when setting alarms, so I don't accidentally set an alarm for the wrong time (5 pm instead of 5 am).

Fellow expat and subscriber here. Funny story regarding post codes and zip codes, and a very valuable lesson I learned when I first emigrated.... Back in England I could navigate to a post code and be within a few houses, then just look for the house number I wanted. So... On an early trip to the US I put the zip code into my GPS and there was not a hotel in sight when I reached my destination. Of course with hindsight, it's blatantly obvious that using only 5 numerical digits to cover the entire USA could not possibly almost pinpoint your location like an English post code, but when you're worn out after a long international flight, well, I was on auto-pilot and just did as I'd always done back across the pond 🤦🏼‍♀️ I ended up in a dodgy neighborhood after dark but fortunately I had the hotel phone number, so all ended well. Thought I'd share so any of our fellow Brits coming to the US don't make the same mistake. (Zip codes take you to the town center). Love your channel Laurence. Keep up the good work. Thank you 👍 🇬🇧 🇺🇸 😊

Point about military time: a time which ends in 00 usually pronounced “hundred.” For example, seven o’clock in the evening is written 1900 but said “nineteen hundred hours.” In military voice transmissions where clarity is important, it can be pronounced “one niner zero zero.” (This is a good way of telling if an American’s been in the military for a good part of their career.)

People in the UK use both a 24 hour clock and a 12 hour clock. 24 hour clock is also used in shortwave radio listening, but shortwave radio transmissions are set to UTC time which is GMT +/- your own time zone.

I'm American but I also put a dash through my sevens. I wasn't taught by anyone to do this but it just made sense to me to distinguish it from ones. I've done it for decades and no one questions me on it.

In Australia our addresses are short (odds and evens on opposite sides of the street, starting at 1, not 100). Postcodes are four digits, no letters. Landline phone numbers used to be six digits and increased to seven as the population rose. School starts with Prep, then Years 1-12. Dates are day-month-year. Easy peasy 😊

When I was young, I would often say "oh" instead of "zero", but when I was in the Marine Corps and had to inventory computers, I needed to distinguish between the letter O and the number 0 when reading serial numbers.

10:55 the use of the letter O in phone numbers in the UK is a throwback to dial phones, where the 0 (zero) had the letter O assigned to it on the dial. Until the late 1950s to make a long distance call you had to go via the Operator, so you dialled the 0, which was "O, for the Operator". When area dialling codes and automatic long distance calling was introduced, the 0 effectively meant "long distance", and so the use of O for 0 in speech remained in use, though it has become less commonplace.

ISO 8601 is becoming common in business due to data. The format is YYYY-MM-DD

Amendment to the zip code part: There is also zip+4. Essentially, the 5-digit zip code only specifies the nearest post office. The extra four serve to specify a particular address or po box.

I can’t stop staring at that curl!😹

When I hired out on the railroad in 1974, we used the 24-hour clock for crew starting (and ending) times, but 12-hour times for public passenger timetables. Still do.

Adding a horizontal stroke through a number seven was not a British practice until the 1970s. Lots of youngsters saw the referees on the international version of "It's a Knockout", "Jeux Sans Frontieres", writing their sevens with a horizontal stroke. It became a bit of a fashion that lingers today.

Okay, taking it by the numbers... (heh) Zip codes: Since the early 80s, USPS has been using extended zip codes (or zip +4), so it's typically 9 digits (unless you live in a small enough town that the specificity doesn't really matter). We're not entirely unfamiliar with number-and-letter zip codes, either, since that's what our Commonwealth neighbors to the North use. Also, fun fact, older phone number exchanges are derived from town names just as your postal codes are. So for example, the Glenn Miller Song "Pennsylvania 6-5000" refers to the old format of the Pennsylvania Hotel's phone # in NYC, PE6-5000 ("PE" for the area around Penn Station), or 736-5000 (look at the letters under the numbers on a phone keyboard). Military time: in the military, they'd say "seventeen hundred" for 5pm. (and for 5 am, they'd say "oh five hundred.") Personally, I use it at home because I have occasional insomnia, and it can be very disorienting to wake up at, say, 7:00 in the summer and not be sure which one it is. Although I think it was more common when we had more analog clocks around, some Americans will just as easily say "quarter past/after 9" or "half past" or "quarter to/of 10" as 9:15, 9:30, and 9:45. ("Half nine" confuses me utterly because I don't know if you mean after or until the hour. In German "halb neun" would be 8:30, so you're not even consistent with the rest of Europe... although I'd guess that lumping Britain with Europe could be considered "fightin' words" post-Brexit and all.) Fractions: I think it depends on context... in math, I'm more likely to say one-fourth, but for a recipe I'd say a quarter cup, and a measurement would be "quarter-inch plywood" or "a quarter-mile down the road." Zero: Sorry, no. Americans are not only just as likely to say "oh" for "zero," (Beverly Hills 9-oh-2-1-oh, anyone?) we'll sometimes use them both in reciting a phone number: ("Her phone number is two-oh-two, three-five-zero, nine-five-oh-four"). In sports we'd say a score is six-to-zero or six-nothing (except in tennis, which is weird). "A big goose egg," zip, zilch, nada, and bupkis are all slangy, somewhat cheeky ways of saying zero (those last two are Spanish and Yiddish, btw). And you'd say "six-zip" or "six-zilch," not "six to zilch." (And I think I've used "zilch" more in this paragraph than I've ever used in over 50 years of life... that could be a generational or regional thing? I'm from NY.) Crossing sevens: Americans don't typically cross our 7's because many of us don't hook our 1's-- it's just a straight vertical line. (Which creates a different problem, which is why I generally loop my lower-case L's.) I *did* pick up the habit of hooking and crossing my 7's, but that's because I thought the way my German grandmother made her 7's looked cool.

I am born and raised American, but I write my dates the way we did when I was in the Navy many years ago, 2 numbers for the day, three letters for the month, and 2 numbers for the year; as in today's date 15JUL24, or the past Independence Day, 04JUL24. I still use the system because it just seems the clearest one I have come across.

I just love the sense of your humour and your videos are so entertaining and wonderfully educating at the same time. Absolut kudos to you!!!!!!

11:04 That's not true. Most of the time we do say "OH" for "Zero" in phone numbers since it's ONE SYLLABLE. Only time I do say "ZERO" is if someone is having trouble understanding my THICK NORTHERN ILLINOIS/CHICAGO accent, since I now live in the deep south. My accent is as bad to some people as Creole Accent is to me. People keep thinking my dog name is "Trevor" when I say it, no matter how slow I say it. It's "Trapper", he's a foxhound/catahoula mix from the local shelter. Great dog, very unpersonable, but not in an aggressive manner, just standoffish. His sister, is scarier looking, but the biggest sweetheart. So when walking both, most want to pet Trapper over Zelda and quickly learn how cold Trapper is, and how sweet the scary all black police dog is. Zelda's a mutt (more so than Trapper), she's a Dutch/Malinois/Lab mix. Doesn't help that Zelda likes to bark at people, sprint at them, reach them, sit and expect pets. She's a special dog. LOL...

Also at least in Canada when saying a score in sports we will often say 'The Leafs lost three nothing' when the score was 3-0

The highest building number I know in Britain is an office block called 1,010 Great West Road, Brentford, Middx.

In the USA, the total zip code for an address is 5 numbers a dash (-) and four more numbers which identifies the exact property. Very few people seem to include the last four numbers.

I grew up in Pennsylvania Dutch area and the line through the seven was common. Also, the number one looked like a mountain peak. As for “oh” for zero, I hear and use both regularly.

I've got news for you, Digital Clocks can be 12 or 24 hours. 24 hour is used in all sorts, not just military, eg trains, buses, haulage, etc, ie anything where you need to be sure its ante or post meridiem, and the Postcode can get you down to a few houses, whereas the Zone Improvement Plan (ZIP) can only get you down to thousands of homes!

I live in the UK and I very rarely use military time, although I was brought up to recognise the hands of a clock as opposed to digital numbers.

I’m surprised that Laurence hasn’t heard zero pronounced as _oh_ here in the States - it’s pretty common in my experience. Seems like you’re most likely to hear it as _oh_ when it occurs in the midst of a string of numbers (rather than by itself or on either end of such a string). For instance, my old “mobile” number began with 308, which i invariably pronounced as “3-oh-8”. But if i had a British-style number, i’d have to train myself to say “oh-7-3” rather than “zero-7-3”.

The thing with british postcodes is that the first 2 letters denote the postal district (as mentioned in the video), more often than not its a city abbreviation, Liverpool is LV, Glasgow is just G, then followed by 1 or 2 numbers which are the area broken down into smaller areas. The last 3 digits are specific to your street. So technically, you could send a letter with nothing but the house number and the postcode and it would reach you. Also if you google lets say 90210 on google maps, it's going to show the whole of Beverly Hills, but if I were to type my own postcode in, it will show my exact street.

I'm an American and funnily enough I always have my phone set to military time. I find it easier to use for things like keeping track of when I took my meds, because I don't have to write am/pm. I like doing this. I also have a lot of family in the military, so that maybe a contributor as to why. Also, it's not just the military that uses military; I've recently learned that trains in the USA often run on military time too. I find that interesting. Keep up the good work.

In the US military the term "O dark thirty" denotes a time after midnight but before dawn. Great video Laurence! Each new video is like sitting down to the season premier of a favorite TV show.

2:10 - Where I'm from (Manchester), some postcodes have five characters. The same also applies for, iirc, Birmingham, Liverpool, Sheffield, Glasgow and parts of London.

The 24 hour clock is used in many contexts in the USA, but not by the general public. It is used in hospitals, and even in some manufacturing settings. Anywhere that 3:00 am and 3:00 pm are equally likely tomes for an event to occur ..

Thanks for giving away John Q. Public's social security there. The poor guy. 😂

In the Netherlands we use the week numbers for things like making appointments, uncommon for my English colleagues.

For 0, I use and hear 'oh" all the time. Zilch is uncommon, but zero, zip, zilch, nada is a saying, and nil and naught are used aplenty here. In sports you might commonly here 'goose egg', depending on the sport. We have numerous words for 0, we're very creative with it!

'Oh' is used quite a bit in the US, e.g. FM station frequencies like one-oh-two-point-seven.

Phone numbers in the U.S. use the three digit area code along with a seven digit number, which itself breaks down into a three-digit local zone prefix followed by a four digit number. If you watch old movies, often someone will make a phone call by verbally asking the operator to connect them, providing a phone number that would sound something like "Anderson 2549". In that instance, "Anderson" was the name of the zone, and 2549 was the particular phone's ID number. The zone names were eventually replaced with three-digit numbers, leading to the seven digit phone numbers we're familiar with. It used to be that using an area code meant one was making a long-distance call, which was charged differently from a local call (using only seven digits, the first three being either ones own zone or a nearby zone). However, out of necessity, the number of area codes has increased to the point where many locales now require a full ten-digit dial no matter what sort of call one is making.

American ZIP Code is nine digits. It used to be five but the extension was added quite some time ago

I worked all of my career in an engineering context and early on I started dashing my sevens and back-slashing my zeros. My printing changed too: putting tails on lower-case tees and the like.

Sorry, US postal codes are 5+4=9 digits. Most people do not use the final four digits, but commercial and governnent mail almost always does.

The home I grew up in was 15447. As an adult I lived at 2 Long Dr. When I talked to someone on the phone they always asked for the house number. They thought the road was called Too Long.

In the Midwest, house numbers (street addresses) are often derived from 100-per-block, where a block is usually 1/8 mile. Thus, if you are at Our Lady of Solitude Monastery, 9020 N 381st Ave, Tonopah, Arizona, you are 9020/800=11.275 miles north and 38100/800=47.625 miles west of Maricopa County's zero point of Washington St. and Central Ave., Phoenix. - Folks in New England will think that utterly bonkers, since as in the UK their house numbers rarely exceed a couple hundred, probably because streets there curve so much nobody could follow them that far.

Lovely, entertaining and enlightening explanations of our little numerical differences.👍

I noticed how in England it's common to say, "It's a 10 minute walk" - maybe if you're 6' tall and a trained speedwalker, but as a 5'2" woman, it was always more like 20-30 minutes, which was difficult when my disabled sister and I were trying to get around. She could manage 10 minutes, but it was never actually 10 minutes. It's the same in France.

Fun fact. US street addresses are often referenced to a major town, city, or county center. For example if one lived at 5268 Rose Blvd, It means they are roughly 5 miles from that central landmark. This means you can often navigate using street numbers alone if you know where your starting point is cardinal direction wise and pay attention to whether the numbers are increasing or decreasing.

time is regional. i grew up in the Boston area. I always heard Quarter til Nine or Quarter past nine or half past etc.

12:22 In Canada we call it x's and o's. In the Netherlands we used the word Milliard for the American billion.

On the "military time" Many companies use the 24 hour time for just about everything from time clocks to registers to programming Its also refered to as "hundred" such as 13:00 is thirteen hundred On zero. I've seen people in the US use ziltch, nada, zed, nought, ought On zip codes there is the 5 primary numbers and 4 extended numbers

ALSO in Scotland the school years are even more different! Primary school is P1-7 and secondary is S1-6. We usually just say P1 or Primary 1, but for secondary we'll either say S1 or first year. When you're talking about 'Britain', there's always gonna be something we do differently to the rest lol

I’m Canadian, not sure if it’s just me but I remember hearing for the first time British people spelling out phone numbers with “double-X” or “triple-X” when the number (X) was repeating. E.g 1-800 as “one-eight-double-o…” rather than “one-eight-hundred…”. Did anyone else noticed that?

i've used international time on my phones and stuff since i was 16 or 17. at this point i think it just makes more sense

You are wrong about the clocks. In Britain some people choose to have their clocks and watches use the 24-hour clock (not your so-called 'military time', which nobody calls it). Other people choose to have their clocks and watches use the 12-hour clock. Many digital clocks and watches have the option to switch between the two. It's all a matter of personal preference.

Most digital clocks will do both 12 or 24 hours time.

Fun fact. In most transport, people still use time in reference to "Zulu", or GMT, thanks to frequent time zone changes and the need to have a common reference.

Lots of American corporations use military time when documenting or time stamping databases. communications, transactions, and such. It is easier overall.

I say “o” for 0 quite a bit. I’m not sure if it is a regional thing, but Americans do say it that way.

I confused the hell out of a local once by saying the time was "twenty to three". Her gears had to spin for several seconds to understand that meant "two forty", and she laughed when she got it.

American do use "oh" for "zero" sometimes. We'll also use "nil" but less frequently, but definitely in sports.

Haha! New Englanders say “oh” for zero. Zip code for a part of Boston is 02134, pronounced, “Oh Two Wun Three Faw!” Zoom. If you know, you know.

Canada mixes SSN and NIN to arrive at SIN. "What is your SIN" isn't always a question about morals! (Social insurance number.) BTW I am old enough to have encountered "milliard" for the US short billion. I was probably in my 40s when I first heard the term "military time" for the 24 hour clock. Long ago my grandparents called it "railway time".

I use the international date and time format : YYYY:MM:DD HHHH:MM:SS. That fixes everything.

In the UK, the '24 hour' clock became common use due to railway time tables.

I work in a UPS Store and everything you said about numbers is true with the exception of saying “OH” for zero. I never, ever, ever hear anyone where I live say the word “zero” for 0. Only the word “OH” and it drives me bananas because that is a letter and not a number.

Can you do a video on the origin and why British people add an 'er' at the end of some words? I.E. Harmonica = Harmonicer, Jessica = Jessicer, etc :)

That long billion still exists in other languages such as Dutch. In Dutch there are even special words for what would be a short billion and so on. It's an entire system. See it goes like this: A million. - Een miljoen. A billion. - Een miljard. A trillion. - Een biljoen. A quadrillion. - Een biljard. And so and so forth. The same prefixes as in English, but they switch the affixes from -joen to -jard for every prefix.

Dates. Americans use month before day, except for the military. 11 years with the Navy got me in the habit of writing date day month year, with spaces-no tacks, no slashes. My wife hates it. 🤷🏼‍♂️ She also hates the 24-hour clock. Oh well. 🤷🏼‍♂️ Edit: my mom used to have “half past 9,” for 9:30. And for the 24 hour clock, we say “hundred,” at least in the military, where 13 o’clock is 13 hundred. We write it that way too, 1300 for 1pm.

I LOVE THE WAY YOU PRONOUNCE “MOVE”. The first syllable is stated soooooo hard. Haha

We definitely use "oh" for zero, and cross the 7s in the US, too.

The zero observation is also Midwest-specific. A shutout sports score in the Northeast is usually given, "Six-Nothing".

I'm actually with Lawrence on adding a horizontal stroke through the middle of the 7. It looks nicer imo, and there's no room for confusion with the letter 1. I also add a diagonal stroke through the number 0 (to avoid confusion with the letter O) and a horizontal stroke through the letter Z for style (which is pronounced "zee," you will never get me to accept zed).

I really wish that the US would formally adopt the 24 hour clock. It's just so much easier to work with, as there's only one of each hour.

DO THAT NOW

I know you are a channel about the differences between the UK and the US but as someone from Australia I found reading Harry Potter interesting for 1 reason. In the discussion about number 12 Grimmauld place it was revealed that the adjacent houses were 11 and 13. I don't know if this is common for England or not but in Australia, we have adopted odd numbers on 1 side of the street and even on the other so we would have had 10 and 14 on either side. Can anyone shed some light on this please?

Zero is also ZIP

Ireland didn’t have postcodes outside Dublin until 2015. A system of subdivisions called “townlands” break Ireland up into small parcels which meant postcodes weren’t as essential. When the state finally did develop a postcode system, they decided each individual house of premises should have its own individual code. An English friend of mine was laughing at that fact because they thought it was backwards but when I explained it, they realised how ingenious it is. Anywhere you need to go, you type the Eircode into your phone or satnav and it will bring you to the door. No street names, no guesswork. It’s fantastic.

US here; i work at a hospital (a very small one in a small community) and we use military time on most of our clocks and all of our schedules. When I would listen to the police scanner in the ER while cleaning, I would always hear them using military time to and I've been trying better recently to memorize it while at home.

My teacher taught us to put a dash through 7 for the same reason you said. I have written it that way ever since out of habit and prefer it honestly. It amazes me how many people act like I've just written in Egyptian Hieroglyphs when they see how I write 7. My fellow Americans, it is just better! Do it!

Another numbering difference between UK and US is the use of a comma instead of a period to mark a full stop. In the US commas are placed every three digit positions to the left of the decimal point to assist in reading a number.

Before we switched to numeric area codes in the 1960s Grimsby's code was presumably GRB - which translates to 472 - hence the modern 01472 dialling code.