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I've been seeing this often enough to wonder about it: house numbers written in words. For example: "Twenty-four Nineteen", instead of "2419". House numbers with a zero in them even have "O" (letter) or "Oh", or even a "0" (zero), such as "Three Oh Nine" for "309". At times, the words are written in cursive or a hard-to-read font like Old English, as opposed to a more pragmatic Helvetica or a similar font. This seems to be a mainly affluent people's phenomenon, since I rarely see house numbers spelled out in working-class areas. It's also more common with numbers less than 1000, and even more so for numbers less than 10.
Why? I don't see a single benefit in spelling out house numbers. It's much harder to read what's a series of words than a simple string of digits. Which makes it harder for visitors to find your house, if they don't already know it really well. In fact, not just visitors; it's harder for delivery workers and emergency services to locate your house, if they can't read the number quickly and easily from a moving vehicle. Especially with certain fonts.
What does everyone else think about this? Do you prefer numbers or words? Does the font make a difference?
Last edited by MillennialUrbanist; 06-03-2018 at 11:12 AM..
There is no benefit and emergency services hates them. They like nice clear numbers that are easily visible from the street. That can be a major issue in areas with long driveways and spread out houses.
I've been seeing this often enough to wonder about it: house numbers written in words. For example: "Twenty-four Nineteen", instead of "2419". House numbers with a zero in them even have "O" (letter) or "Oh", or even a "0" (zero), such as "Three Oh Nine" for "309". At times, the words are written in cursive or a hard-to-read font like Old English, as opposed to a more pragmatic Helvetica or a similar font. This seems to be a mainly affluent people's phenomenon, since I rarely see house numbers spelled out in working-class areas. It's also more common with numbers less than 1000, and even more so for numbers less than 10.
Why? I don't see a single benefit in spelling out house numbers. It's much harder to read what's a series of words than a simple string of digits. Which makes it harder for visitors to find your house, if they don't already know it really well. In fact, not just visitors; it's harder for delivery workers and emergency services to locate your house, if they can't read the number quickly and easily from a moving vehicle. Especially with certain fonts.
What does everyone else think about this? Do you prefer numbers or words? Does the font make a difference?
I think this would work best for those ending in zero and repetitious, like "Twenty-Twenty".
There is no benefit and emergency services hates them. They like nice clear numbers that are easily visible from the street. That can be a major issue in areas with long driveways and spread out houses.
Parts of the unincorporated DuPage County have a solution for this. It uses two house number markers: a county one and a personal one. The personal one can be whatever you want it to be, located anywhere on or in front of the house. The county one looks like a small street sign, located next to the driveway. They all look the same: bold white letters in a plain font on a contrasting background.
The reason is like you described. Unincorporated areas tend to be rural-looking and spread out. Also, the house numbers in those areas are non-standard. They look something like this: "2N085" or "32W344" (the leading zero after the letter is required). I can only imagine how it'll look spelled out: "Thirty-two West Three Forty-four". (Google Maps didn't even recognize those addresses until a few years ago.)
It's a style preference. If you don't like it, you don't have to do it. .
Sometimes it just looks cool or different...
My friends house number is 210. They have the number on the curb, and at the mailbox - very well visible to everyone. At the house they have ornamental boulder that says: Two ten Mariposa Dr. It looks great. Simple numbers sounds good... So why not?
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I don't see a single benefit in spelling out house numbers. It's much harder to read what's a series of words than a simple string of digits. Which makes it harder for visitors to find your house, if they don't already know it really well. In fact, not just visitors; it's harder for delivery workers and emergency services to locate your house, if they can't read the number quickly and easily from a moving vehicle. Especially with certain fonts.
