The words ‘figure’ and ‘number’ are often confused. But, linguistically speaking, they are to be distinguished from one another: a figure (or numeral) is the graphic representation of a number, which is a mathematical concept. Several figures can be combined to form a number. For example, the number ‘22’ is represented by two figures ‘2’.

There are multiple styles of figures (oldstyle, proportional, lining, tabular, etc.) that suit specific situations.

HISTORY

In Europe, figures and numbers used to be represented by Roman capital letters (X, V, I, D, C, etc.). With the rise of trade with Arab countries around the 15th century, the Arabic figures (themselves influenced by Indian figures) were adopted and replaced the Roman capitals. These distinct origins explain the difference between the structure and stroke shapes of modern figures compared to Latin letters.