The limit does exist: how many numbers is too many numbers?

When I was studying journalism, we were taught to never include more than three numerical values in a sentence because it melts people's brains and you don't want that on your conscience. What I mean by numerical values is dates, percentages, dollar amounts, age, kilograms - anything that's defined by a number.

Here's an example that includes four numerical elements:

A survey from 22 years ago found 75% of women aged between 35-55 had owned more than two cars in their lifetime.

This many values in one sentence can be a lot to process. And, practically speaking, when there are too many values in play, they all lose potency. When your reader's brain is overloaded in this way, they're more likely to make mistakes — more likely to read the date as the month or the sub-total as the total or 24-hour time as 12-hour time. You might not notice this often happens when you're booking flights and you're trying to double-check the date, time, year, number of passengers, credit card numbers, and amount to be paid all at once in a high-pressure situation - your brain has to whir very fast to process it all.

And even when you reduce the instance of numerals down to three, the recommended limit, it's still a bit dense:

A survey from 22 years ago, a survey found 75% of women had owned more than two cars in their lifetime.*

You still have to hold three values in your head and mash them together to try and draw a meaningful conclusion. It's tricky. But how to get around it? Often when you're conveying statistics, you do have lots of values that give each other context so it's not easy to cut any. Here are some tips to un-dense-ify your sentences when conveying numerical information.

I don’t have a relevant photo for you so once again, please accept an image of this cursed long Furby instead.

Change values into words

If your writing doesn't need to be reallllly precise, you can change 75% into "the majority" or even "three-quarters" to make it easier to parse. Depending on how you're writing, you can use fine print or an asterisk to add detail in a way that doesn't impede understanding.

Be precise

Instead of using a range of values or a relative value, try to be exact. The more precise your numbers, the few mental gymnastics the reader has to jump through to put all the pieces together. Instead of saying "A survey from 22 years ago" you can say "In 1990, a survey found". The exception to this is when you're trying to emphasise the passage of time. For example, saying "My grandparents were married fifty years ago" is more interesting and emphatic than saying "My grandparents were married in 1972".

Focus on what's meaningful

Prioritise the values that give real meaning to the message**. In our example from earlier, the two most important pieces of information, in my opinion, are the date (this is an old survey - is it still relevant today?) and the percentage of women (75% - pretty high) who claimed to have owned more than two cars. The phrase "in their lifetime" tries to add detail but muddies the water. You could rewrite that sentence to read like this: "In 1990, a survey found three-quarters of women had owned two or more cars."

Always use the classifier

Don't let your values float in space - use a classifier, like kilograms, p.m., %, etc. This is a tip for interpersonal comms rather than work comms because we tend to be sloppiest when texting in a rush. I work at a coworking space called 380 (it's cute, check it out here). But this often leads to bizarro texts like "see you on the 13th at 5 at 380". In this situation, be kind and use classifiers: "see you on the 13th of December at 5pm at the 380 office".

TL;DR? Using too many values in a sentence can overload your reader’s brain. If it’s possible, try to use fewer values while maintaining the core meaning of the message. Always use classifiers for your values.

*Not a real stat, please don’t @ me on this, I know nothing about cars.
**Have you ever noticed this very helpful Gmail feature: it summarises your upcoming flight at the top of your confirmation email? When your flight is drawing near, it changes the date of your flight to "tomorrow" or "today" which is much easier to understand, at a glance, than a date. A great trick to reduce friction for travellers.

***I feel this will be a controversial statement. Some people write in fields where it would be a massive no-no to exclude any context around statistics. If this is you, keep doing your thing, baby!