Start spelling each word as you count, starting with one.

How high do you have to count before you reach a number that has the letter "a" in it?

I believe the answer is "one thousand." As for an explanation of why 101 is not correct:

I was taught that the "and" in spoken numbers represents the decimal point. To say "one hundred and one..." is missing a place value.

The only way to complete the phrase correctly would be, for example, "one hundred and one tenth," which of course is written 100.1

So we see that the word "and" never appears in the written or spoken representations of any cardinal numbers!

Posted by Chris on 2003-05-08 09:34:54