Tricky Teen Names: Why Thirteen Sounds Backward from How We Write It

This idea walks around your house all day. Every language has quirks. Knowing where the traps are is how careful people avoid them. This is worth learning because knowing where a trap sits is how you keep from stepping in it.

Watch for it today, and when you spot it, tell someone what you noticed and how you knew. Ask yourself where else the same idea might be hiding, then go and look.

This is a good thing for a young mathematician to know. English plays a trick with teens. Thirteen says the three part first and then the teen, but we write 13 with the one first. That is why so many people write 31 by mistake.

Slow down and think: thirteen is one ten and three ones, so the 1 goes first. Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen do the same thing. Knowing about the trick is how you stop falling for it.

Try slowing down on purpose with these. Write the number of tens first, always, then the ones. That order is the rule, and following it every time is what protects you when a name sounds backward from how it is written. Do it carefully rather than quickly, and thank God for a mind that can learn.