Place Value & Naming Decimals

The first thing to understand about decimals is place value. Each digit in a number holds a specific place. 

Until now, we have mostly dealt with place values to the left of the decimal. The place values to the right end in "ths". Here is a number with seven significant digits to the right of the decimal:

Look Out: notice there is no such thing as the"oneths" place.

When naming a number, we use the word "and" to mean everything after the decimal, and you usually only pronounce the last place value. For example, 47.056 would be pronounced "forty-seven and fifty-six thousandths".

Examples