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I've seen numbers like "hundert", "tausend", "hunderttausend" in German written in both upper and lower cases:

Upper case: Hunderte von Menschen, einige Hundert Menschen

Lower case: hunderte von Menschen, einige hundert Menschen

Is there a rule for when to use which one? What are the differences?

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  • related: german.stackexchange.com/questions/3223/…
    – Takkat
    Commented Sep 2, 2013 at 6:16
  • @Takkat Can you merge both questions? The other answer links to canoo.net, and this link does answer this question.
    – Em1
    Commented Sep 2, 2013 at 7:14
  • @Em1: from the point of view of people finding this by Google it is much better to close as dupe (in case we agree that it really is a dupe) than to merge.
    – Takkat
    Commented Sep 2, 2013 at 8:00

1 Answer 1

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From the link to canoo about capitalization of numbers (§58 E5) I translate and sumarize:

When hundert and tausend represent an indeterminate number, which one cannot write with numbers, they could refeer to the numerals Hundert and Tausend. Accordingly they can be capitalized or not. For instance:

  • Es kamen viele tausende/Tausende von Zuschauern.
  • Mehrere tausend/Tausend Menschen füllten das Stadion
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