Doing things by the numbers

In the TV series “24,” which is sometimes written on screen as “Twentyfour,” counter- terrorism agent Jack Bauer has saved the world from nuclear destruction, thwarted poison gas attacks on civilians, escaped the clutch of terrorist abductors, exposed a traitor in the White House, used a cell phone nonstop for 24 hours without the battery dying and himself actually risen from the dead.

And, through the miracle called “suspension of disbelief,” I and millions of other Americans can simply accept all this.

But when Jack jumps into his SUV at 9 a.m. at Ontario Airport then comes screeching up five minutes later in the heart of the San Fernando Valley ? well, that’s when they’ve gone too far.

It’s exactly this kind of absurdity that has been turning people off of scripted television and into the clutches of reality TV. This is why I believe there’s a huge demand for a new reality show I’ve come up with, called “The Real 24,” in which entire episodes contain nothing but Jack Bauer sitting in his car for 60 minutes at a pop.

Oh, and there would be one more major difference between my show and the original: When my show cuts to commercial, the graphic would correctly spell out, “Twenty-four.”

The guidelines for writing numbers ? especially for knowing when to spell them out are ridiculously complicated.

Newspapers follow different guidelines from books, so the more you read the less you know. And even if you stick to just one style guide, say the newspaper style bible the Associated Press Stylebook, trouble will find you faster than Jack can find a wide-open lane on the 110 at rush hour.

AP’s basic rule is that numbers less than 10 are spelled out, while 10 and up are written as figures. “I guffaw in disbelief an average of eight to 12 times during each one-hour episode.”

But AP has literally dozens of different entries with confusing and seemingly arbitrary rules. For example, ages always require figures. “Jack looks about 38 years old, his daughter looks 24 years old and this might seem perfectly plausible to an 8-year-old.”

You have to look under “fractions” to see that you’re supposed to spell out and hyphenate fractions less than one: “Four-fifths of Jack’s time is spent in the car.” But when writing about a number greater than one, fractions use figures: “Jack’s SUV consumes 1 7/8 tanks of gas every day ? most of it while idling.”

Under “dimensions,” AP tells us that height, width, depth, etc. use figures as well. Jack’s only 5-foot-5 but his gun is a full 8 inches long. But you have to turn to the “weights” to see that this is true of weights as well. “That’s 5 pounds of baloney.”

But none of the dozens of listings referenced in AP’s numbers section will tell you how to spell and punctuate numbers.

The know where to turn for this answer, you must already know where to turn ? or at least read a column by someone who knows where to turn:

In the punctuation section of the AP Stylebook, under “hyphens,” we find our answer: “When large numbers must be spelled out, use a hyphen to connect a word ending in -y to another word: ‘twenty-one,’ ‘fifty-five,’ etc.”

And that, above all else, is why the show “Twentyfour” is nowhere near as successful as my properly punctuated show will be.