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How do you do numbers?

I'm beginning to not like the number bar so much. I'm just learning to write 20-100, and if I want to make sure I don't drop or fall behind, I gotta use the number bar at this point. But I'm starting to notice that the number bar can also lead to cluster*f when it comes to getting back to home row and overthinking. But I can't imagine not using the bar for ridiculously large amounts, like large sums of money n such.

What are you doing??

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Glen Warner on May 19, 2012 at 10:50

Hi, Mary.

I see you're at Prince in Denver, which is a Phoenix school!

If they follow the theory book, soon you will learn how to write all of your numbers phonetically ... and once I learned to do that, the only time I touched the number bar was to wipe a bit of dust off of it ...!

They'll tell you this in your book, but when you use the number bar and screw up, you still have numbers in your transcript -- but not necessarily the *right* numbers.

If you write your numbers phonetically instead and mess up, you'll get an outline that is (hopefully!) close to the number you meant to write ... and that's why I stick with the phonetic numbers.

Finally, one of the CR books I read sometime back recommended warming up with what she called "The ABC's and 123's," which, as you might guess, is where you write your alphabets and your numbers -- both phonetically and as numbers.

I write all five of the Phoenix Theory alphabets, then I write the numbers as numbers in groups of ten, all the way to one hundred, then do the same thing in words.

I also write the days of the week in pyramid fashion, like so:

Sunday

Sunday Monday

Sunday Monday Tuesday (etc.)

If I make a mistake at this point, I start over.

I then repeat that same method for the months of the year.

Every once in a while, I will do the states in the same fashion, but that's too much work, so I have decided to just go through the states once every day instead.

Well. Way more than you asked about, but I hope it helps ...!

Permalink Reply by Mary Smith on May 19, 2012 at 11:06

I do pyramids a lot, but they don't seem to help me for numbers. That's a good point about being able to decipher missed numbers from your notes - not possible at all with the bar really.

So you write out really large number amounts phonetically as well? Granted, I haven't gotten to the big numbers, but I'm trying to figure out how much I want to rely on the number bar. You find phonetics to always be the easier route for you? Do you ever use the number bar?

My teacher encourages us to explore which way we prefer. I should probably focus on being proficient at both the bar and strokes, but I don't want to confuse myself either....

Permalink Reply by Keith Rowan II on May 19, 2012 at 11:57

I write all my numbers phonetically. As long as all of the strokes are easy, it's no problem keeping up with big numbers or a lot of numbers. And if you miss one key, you can still usually figure out what the number is. If you miss one key on the number bar, the number is totally wrong and you have to rely on your audio or the documents or whatever. So phonetic works for me personally. And they're all briefs. One to 99 are all one stroke. 100, 200 , etc are one stroke. Of course THOU for thousand, M-L for million, TR-L for trillion etc

Permalink Reply by Mary Smith on May 19, 2012 at 12:17

Now that sounds like the way to go..... did you create your own briefs?

Permalink Reply by Keith Rowan II on May 19, 2012 at 21:01

I took the briefs that people have been using for decades and tweaked them to my own liking. Attached here is the file with all of them. There may be a few that I've changed, but this is pretty accurate.

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