Dollar bills
Man: That’s 15 dollars in coins, plus a 5-dollar bill, it’s 20 dollars,
plus a 10 dollar bill is 30 dollars, plus a 20 dollar bill is 50 dollars
altogether.
Store Keeper: 50 dollars?
Man: Everything is half price today.
Which is grammatically correct:
1: 1-dollar bill
5-dollar bill
10-dollar bill
20-dollar bill …
2: 1 dollar bill
5 dollar bill
10 dollar bill
20 dollar bill …
3: one-dollar bill
five-dollar bill
ten-dollar bill
twenty-dollar bill …
4: one dollar bill
five dollar bill
ten dollar bill
twenty dollar bill …
Thank you
2 Likes
Thank you so much, Anglophile 
1 Like
I agree that #3 is the safest choice. However #4 might be the latest trend.
I know there has been a strong trend away from hyphenated words in recent times. The Oxford dictionary recently removed the hyphen from several thousand entries to reflect modern usage.
I checked four dictionaries and none of them had an entry for “one-dollar”, “five-dollar”, etc. The closest entry I found was “half dollar” which was not hyphenated.
Numerals vs written number
I learned that if the number is two words or less it should be written out. If it’s three words or more it should be numerals.
One
Seventeen
One hundred
Seven hundred
Two thousand
101
250
5010
I also learned to not mix numerals and written numbers in the same sentence, and doing it in the same paragraph is frowned upon.
A list of dollar amounts like in your example is a special case though. I think Anglophile’s example is fine. Your example is not really a typical sentence. It’s more like written math which has it’s own rules, nomenclature and format.
3 Likes
Thank you so much, NearlyNapping 
Very nice explanation.
1 Like
Are you in favour of this trend?
Can we approve of ‘twenty four’, ‘two thirds’, ‘principal in charge’, ‘brother in law’ etc?
Don’t people become too lazy in the guise of saving ‘time, space and effort’?
2 Likes
With a few exceptions I don’t really care. Like in your examples I think “brother-in-law” should be hyphenated.
When I write I normally just use whatever looks best to me. I suck at spelling and hyphens are just part of spelling. I know spell checkers don’t care most of the time.
3 Likes
Because there is the mint and BEP that makes billions and billions of money needed. If the Twelve Federal Reserve banks need more money in circulation they call for more to be printed and coined by the mints {Denver, Philadelphia} and the two Engraving and Printing Facilities in Washington and Ft Worth, Texas. Bill
1 Like