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A friend tweeted

I am following a 1000 accounts now

and I told him it was wrong but he says it's correct. I'm of the view that the correct one is

I am following 1000 accounts now.

So which one is correct?

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This is Not A Real Question. In speech, or using orthography to represent speech accurately, one would say "...following a thousand accounts". If there's a "real" question here, it's simply "Does '100' represent 'a hundred', or just the word 'hundred'?". But that would be a pointless question anyway, imho. – FumbleFingers Jun 19 '12 at 16:38
FumbleFingers does have a valid point here. You would really only write "a thousand" explicitly, and never "a 1000" as a matter of course. Whether or not you say "a thousand" when you come across 1000 in-text is beside the point. – shinyspoongod Jun 19 '12 at 17:04

closed as not a real question by FumbleFingers, MετάEd, kiamlaluno, tchrist, Mitch Sep 12 '12 at 14:57

It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form. For help clarifying this question so that it can be reopened, see the FAQ.

2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote accepted

I know what you're experiencing.

These days, in the rush of social selling/ content marketing, it has become very common to see ads like: "Connect with 1000s of leading business experts."

Personally, I find it distracting to read because technically it should be read as "Connect with ONE THOUSANDS of..."

But what how the ads want you to read it is: "Connect with THOUSANDS of..." only.

I attribute it to the marketers' desire to maximize space and abbreviate in widgets, Tweets, etc.

So, in the end, personally I'd say "a 1000" is redundant and I wouldn't be caught using that. But then, in this age of Tweets, who's to prescribe what's better?

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up vote 1 down vote

Consider this: a thousand -> 1000 two thousand -> 2000

in "a thousand", "a" comes in place of "1". You could say it "one thousand" as well.

Saying "a 1000" is a little bit redundant. I'm not sure if it is 'forbidden', though.

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