50 PRS Proofreading and Editing Service PhD Experts • All Academic Areas • Fast Turnaround • High Quality • In instances other than the two noted above, numbers 10 and over should be written as numerals (‘13 participants,’ ‘a population of 426 women’ and ‘56 men’), while numbers under 10 should be written as words (‘four trials,’ ‘six students’ and ‘eight participants’). • Ordinal numbers should follow the same pattern as cardinal numbers: that is, numbers 10 and over should be written as numerals and numbers under 10 should be written as words (‘the 56th man in the second trial’ and ‘the eighth participant in the 77th trial’). • When writing numbers as numerals, be sure to observe English convention – 1,389.09 for ‘one thousand, three hundred and eighty-nine point zero nine,’ not 1.389,09 – but also check the journal guidelines in case there are any special instructions about using numbers. A few journals will ask for less punctuation, eliminating the comma from the number above (1389.09), for instance. Finally, formal English prose does not use contractions. Contractions are formed when letters are left out of words and indicated by an apostrophe instead. Examples based on negatives (‘not’) are especially common – ‘don’t,’ ‘doesn’t,’ ‘won’t,’ ‘shouldn’t,’ ‘wouldn’t’ and ‘couldn’t’ are common examples – and often slip into academic and scientific prose. They won’t create confusion, and I use them throughout this Guide to produce a casual tone, but ‘casual’ is not what you want in a formal academic or scientific paper, so contractions should always be avoided. In my experience, scholars don’t usually intend to use contractions in their writing, but they are so common and natural in normal speech that they can all too easily creep into writing whenever an author isn’t entirely vigilant. So once you have your paper drafted, do a search for apostrophes and expand any contractions that turn up, leaving apostrophes for possessives (or single quotation marks) only. PARt II: PRePARIng, PResentIng And PolIsHIng YoUR woRk