Dates, numbers and amounts in French-speaking countries (1 234,56; 03/11/2026)

Documents exchanged with Côte d'Ivoire (in West Africa, French-speaking, the world's largest cocoa producer) write dates, numbers and amounts according to French conventions. The differences may look trivial, but they can shift a delivery date by months or an amount by a factor of a thousand. Here are the points that need the most attention.

Numbers: the comma is the decimal point, the space separates thousands

According to the Académie française, French uses a comma to separate the whole number from the decimals; when expressing quantities, every three digits are separated by a non-breaking space, as in 342 234 euros. Dates, page numbers and article numbers are not separated. The Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) adds that the space in four-digit numbers is optional, and that the currency symbol usually follows the number after a space, as in 50 000 $.

Large numbers: a "billion" is not a billion. This is where the biggest mistakes happen. In French:

• million = million (10⁶)
• milliard = thousand million, i.e. a billion in English (10⁹)
• billion = trillion (10¹²), that is, a million millions

The OQLF notes that French uses a system that steps up in units of a million, unlike American English, which steps up in thousands, so the same word stands for different values. When a French document says 1,5 milliard, it means 1.5 thousand million; in English you write 1.5 billion, rather than copying the French "billion". Also, in French a noun following a number below 2 stays singular, so it is 1,5 milliard, not milliards.

Writing amounts in words, and CFA francs

Contracts, cheques and formal receipts sometimes require amounts to be written out in full (en toutes lettres). The Académie française summarises some common rules:

• vingt and cent: take an s only when multiplied and at the end of the number, as in deux cents euros; no s when another number follows, as in deux cent trois.
• mille: never changes, as in trois mille.
• Hyphens: the traditional rule hyphenates only compound numbers below one hundred (and not where et appears); the 1990 spelling reform allows hyphens between all parts.

When in doubt, ask a French-speaking colleague or translator to check; a mismatch between the figure and the amount in words is a frequent source of later disputes.

West African CFA franc amounts. Côte d'Ivoire uses the West African CFA franc, whose ISO 4217 currency code is XOF (numeric code 952); documents often write it as F CFA or F.CFA. The CFA franc is nominally divided into 100 centimes, but no centime coins or notes have ever been issued, so amounts in practice are usually whole numbers. For bank transfers and international contracts, use the XOF code to avoid confusion with other "francs".

Dates and times

• Numeric dates: day/month/year, so 03/11/2026 is 3 November 2026, not 11 March.
• Written dates: le 3 novembre 2026, with months and weekdays in lower case; the first of the month is written 1er (premier), as in le 1er avril.
• Times: the 24-hour clock, with a lower-case h between hours and minutes; the formal form is 14 h 05, though 14h05 is also common in everyday use.
• The week: starts on Monday.

To avoid misreadings, write delivery dates in contracts and quotations as written dates, or at least include the name of the month.

One line for Asian teams

Before sending a quotation or contract, spend one minute checking decimal points, thousands separators, date order and what "billion" means; it prevents the most expensive kind of misunderstanding.

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References: Académie française: Questions de langue – l'écriture des nombres; OQLF: Espacements dans les nombres; OQLF: billion; Wikipedia: Date and time notation in France; Localizely: ISO 4217 XOF; Wikipedia: West African CFA franc