How to Properly Format Amounts and Dates in Business Communications

Though it may seem like a subject to gloss over without much thought, consistent formatting is actually an integral part of making professional correspondence clear and understandable.

By being precise and knowing the audience, confusion and issues related to receiving payments on time, tracking expenses, and meeting deadlines can be avoided.

Setting up a schedule? Writing MoM? Filling in a spreadsheet? See below for options!

For amounts of money:

Write them with…

Option 1: Currency signs (e.g., $, €, ¥, £)

A currency sign is a symbol that represents a specific form of money. It is placed right before the amount with no spaces.

Examples:

$1,000 or €50

Note that a comma is needed after every third decimal place in numbers greater than 999.

Option 2: Currency codes (USD, EUR, JPY, GBP)

A currency code is a three-letter combination that corresponds to a form of money in the same way as the symbols in option 1. They are written in capital letters and placed after the amount with a single space.

Examples:

1,000 USD or 50 EUR

Option 3: Full words (dollars, euros, yen, pounds)

To skip the signs and codes altogether, you can write out the amounts using just letters. This option is helpful for large round numbers. Instead of something like ‘¥3,000,000,000’, it can be easier to go with ‘three billion yen’.

Examples:

One thousand dollars or fifty euros

For dates

In all of these examples, the current day at the time of writing is displayed.

Option 1:

U.S. version (month day year with a comma)

April 11, 2022

Option 2:

Put the day before the month by adding ‘the’ and ‘of’

the 11th of April 2022

Option 3:

UK version (day month year with no comma)

11 April 2022

Option 4:

Calendar format (only numbers)

04/11/2022 for U.S.

11/04/2022 for UK

Option 5:

Spreadsheet format (used for Excel)

11-Apr-22

Option 6:

International format (year-month-day)

2022-04-11

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