…such as: “thirty (30) days”, “five (5) directors” and “twenty-five thousand, three hundred forty-two dollars ($25,342)”?
In my view, no.
Somewhere along the line, many business lawyers are trained to write out figures in both the word form and number form. Perhaps the idea was that writing out figures in both forms ensured greater accuracy by forcing the drafter to more carefully focus on each figure. Maybe the idea was to include the word form to discourage fraud by making it harder for someone to handwrite different numbers on the document. Still another reason – perhaps the most prevalent – may be that the lawyer drafted figures like this because that’s how his or her first boss out of law school drafted documents.
Whatever the reason, most users of these documents – the business parties themselves – generally skip over the word forms and read only the numbers. The long-winded word forms take up space and are a distraction, and they create an additional area in the document to make mistakes. The risk of fraud is essentially nonexistent in many cases because multiple parties possess copies of the final documents.
There may be limited circumstances that warrant using words along with numbers, for example in handwritten checks in which the original check is given to the payee and no copy is retained. But there is little to be gained from drafting bylaws, agreements, or other business documents that are cluttered with “fifteen (15) days”, “seven and one-half percent (7.5%)”, and “forty-eight (48) hours”.
“15 days”, “7.5%”, and “48 hours” work just fine. They are easier to draft, easier to proof, and — for those who value this attribute — easier to read.
