How do you say “2 August” out loud?
This week’s news told the story of a two-day strike at WestJet, Canada’s second-largest airline. The article is full of numbers — 4,400 flight attendants, 309 cancelled flights, 250,000 affected passengers. But English uses two different number systems, and mixing them up is a common mistake.
We use cardinal numbers (one, two, three, four thousand four hundred) to count things — how many people, how many flights, how much money. We use ordinal numbers (first, second, third) to put things in order — a date, a position in a list, or a rank like “Canada’s second-largest airline”. Ordinal numbers usually end in -st, -nd, -rd or -th, and we normally add the before them: the second of August, the first officer, the third runway.
Watch out for this mistake: we write dates with a cardinal number (2 August) but say them with an ordinal number (the second of August). Don’t say “two August” — and don’t forget the the.
Try these
Choose the correct answer for each question below.
The strike began on 2 August. How do you say this date aloud?
Dates are written with cardinal numbers (2 August) but spoken with ordinal numbers and “the”: the second of August.
WestJet is Canada’s ____-largest airline.
Rankings — first, second, third-largest — always use ordinal numbers, not cardinal numbers.
The article mentions 4,400 flight attendants, 309 cancelled flights, and 250,000 affected passengers. Which number tells you how many flights WestJet cancelled?
309 is the number of cancelled flights — you have to read the sentence carefully, since all three numbers appear close together in the text.
Choose the correct sentence.
Percentages and other quantities use cardinal numbers (36 percent); only rankings and dates use ordinal numbers.
Now make it real
Look at your flight schedule, your roster, or today’s date. Write 1–2 true sentences of your own that use a cardinal number and an ordinal number correctly — a shift start time, a flight number, or how many sectors you’re flying this month.
Before you check, ask yourself:
- Does your sentence say what you actually meant?
- If you wrote a date, did you use the and an ordinal number (the third of September, not three September)?
- Did you use a cardinal number for a quantity (how many, how much)?
- Capital letter and full stop?
- “I’m on duty from the third of September.”
- “This is my 12th flight this month, and I have four more sectors to go.”
Now rewrite your sentence — can you add one more number to make it clearer?
CEFR Level A2 / ICAO Level 3
Want more practice at this level? Browse our CEFR A2 archive for more short, clear articles like this one.
