"thirty four ninety five" is not a number. How many currency did you want to pay? Thirty four? Ninety Five? Thirty four hundreds and ninety five cents? Maybe someone else added the "and 00/100" later and multiplied the intended amount by a hundred, the bank has no way of knowing.
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Someone could add "thirty" before "four hundred", but they could add "thirty" before "four thousand" too. What would you consider the proper way to write a check for $34,000?
Being able to write something before the amount is less important than the ability to add to the end. Otherwise, how do they know Three thousand four hundred and ninety five wasn't originally four hundred and ninety five... which is because you start writing the 'four hundred...' at the far left of the box. The crux of the issue is just that Thirty Four Ninety Five isn't a number.
-1 "Thirty Four Ninety Five is not a number" is an absurd statement, and greatly detracts from this answer. Of course it is number, written with words. The problem, as always, is context. As written on the check, it may be ambiguous (3495 or 34.95?), but, it is a number.
@SelfEvident, well, depending on interpretation, "Thirty Four Ninety Five" can be: 4 numbers (30/4/90/5), 3 numbers (34/90/5 or 30/4/95) or 2 numbers (34/95). But in no case it can be one number (other than if both interlocutors use a pre-agreed shorthand notation). Regardless, the several interpretations possible make it too risky for a bank to validate that as an actual $$ amount.
@littleadv As always, context is king. It is not a grammatical issue. It's not even a sentence, even when written correctly. The ambiguity is, as written, is that it seems unclear as to what type or value of number: 3495, or 34.95? Dollars? Cents? If it was an address, there would be less ambiguity, but it would be a valid way to write an address, even in a sentence.
@SelfEvident True, but that was not your claim, your claim was that it's a valid number. It's not, grammatically. Sure, people use this notation in speech, but.... People say a lot of grammatically incorrect things.
@SelfEvident and no, it wouldn't be a valid way to write an address. This is only reasonably valid when writing years. See examples here: grammarbook.com/numbers/numbers.asp
@Hoki. Um, no. While there can be ambiguity depending on context, as previously pointed out, the four interpretations you present as the only valid interpretations is absurd. For example, maybe my address is Thirty Four Ninety Five S. Main Street.
@SelfEvident House #34 on the intersection of 95th and S. Main street? Maybe, I don't know. But where I live, on 3495 Main St., house numbers are written with numerals.
@littleadv No. Sorry. While maybe limited to only 55 years, and having only lived in many places in the US, in my experience, writing an address as Thirty Four Ninety Five would never be interpreted as you are trying to assert, UNLESS there was a previously understood context for such interpretations. But, this conversation is starting to go off the rails a bit, as far as Stack comments go. :)
I have never had a problem with "Thirty four hundred ninety five and 00/100". As is pointed out above, the risk that the "Thirty" is fake is no greater than with "Thirty four thousand", which can not be written any other way.
Let’s say that “95 cents” vs. “95 dollars” is the reason the check was rejected. I say there’s no ambiguity - “ninety five” specifies dollars since I wrote “and 00/100”. (Side note @DavidJacobsen Jacobsen the way you’ve written “and ninety five” introduces ambiguity that my question doesn’t have.) So say the bank wonders, “what if someone forged ‘and 00/100’ at the end”? Well, imagine my check had the written value “Four hundred ninety five and 00/100” - the 95 is equally ambiguous! Yet it’s properly formed and would be accepted with no issues.
I accept lack of “hundred” or “thousand” as a reasonable cause for rejection. The bank may interpret this as if something was forgotten.
@mikey555 "I say there’s no ambiguity - “ninety five” specifies dollars since I wrote “and 00/100”." The bank does not know that you wrote this, and that's precisely the issue here. Suppose you wrote "thirty four ninety five". It's reasonably likely that you intended $34.95. I intercept your check, and I add "and 00/100" to it. Suddenly, it looks like you intended $3495. I just stole $3,460.05 out of your pocket. This is precisely why the bank doesn't trust it. There is no way to verify that the original writing's interpretation is unchanged by any later malicious additions.
Thirty-Four Ninety-Five could also mean 34095, which would be rather unfortunate for you as well. Regarding the omitted "hundreds" (which is already a less formal way of counting), the bank clerk could also have interpreted this as an alteration from 95, assuming that you left enough space for Thirty-Four but not for a good combination with a thousand.
Discussion on answer by littleadv: I …
Discussion on answer by littleadv: I …