[General] Indebtness

[English for life123]

Dear All Hello from Turkey,

I have aquestion which has been bothering me and my colleagues for days now.It is as follows:

John's indebtness to us is 0$ and our indebtness to John is 10$.

Does the above statement mean that John owes us 0 dollar while we owe john 10 dollars?

Thank you.

 

[Skrej]

Well, that's what it's attempting to say. However the correct word is 'indebtedness'.

Even with that correction, it's not a very natural sentence.

A more natural version would be something like "John doesn't owe us anything, but we owe John $10."

 

[GoesStation]

Note that in English, currency symbols go immediately before the numeral: $10, $25,300,000, $33.2 million. These are read "ten dollars, twenty-five million three hundred thousand dollars, thirty-three point two million dollars."