Believe it or not, you already know how to read decimal numbers. Since you know how to read, write, and count money, you know decimals. You read decimal numbers whenever you deal with money amounts.
Take this example: $15.30. We read that as "fifteen dollars and thirty cents." Now let's remove the dollar sign. It becomes 15.30. Instead of saying "cents," we say "hundredths." When we read the number, we read it as "fifteen and thirty hundredths."
We read $8.25 as "eight dollars and twenty-five cents." Remove the dollar sign and it becomes 8.25. We read it as "eight and twenty-five hundredths."
Now let's give take a deeper look at decimals.
3.35
The digits on the left side of the decimal point tell us about the whole number. In the example above, 3 is the number on the left side. We read it as "three wholes."
The digits on the right side of the decimal point tell us about the fraction, or the part that's added to the wholes. We also call this the decimal number. The number 35 is on the right side of 3.35. We read it as "thirty-five hundredths."
Together, we read 3.35 as "three and thirty-five hundredths," with the decimal point being read as "and."
How do we read 1.18?
We see that 1 is on the left side of the decimal point, so we read it as "one whole."
The number 18 is on the right side of the decimal point. It becomes eighteen hundredths.
Together, we read 1.18 as "one and eighteen hundredths."
