Why do English writers avoid explicit numerals?

Question

> The junction has a stop sign on each of the four entrances. > The junction has a stop sign on each of the 4 entrances.The first is preferred, for some reason, by many English texts. Why? I haven't seen this phenomenon in other languages.

Answer 1

The traditional elements of style suggest that the numbers zero through nine should be written out with letters. This simply looks better on the page. However, if you have numbers that are two digits then you may want to use digits everywhere to provide uniformity in the text. This is an element of style, not an absolute rule. Please look at the text above with the "zero" and "nine". When you look at the page most people think that the text looks better than the numbers.