A base twelve number system (also called dozenal or duodecimal) is a number system that revolves around twelve instead of ten like our typical number system or sixteen like many computer applications.
To do this, we need two more digits -- the familiar zero through nine, plus ten and eleven. Some people are content to use A for ten and B for eleven, but I think that looks stupid, so I came up with my own, which are basically ligatures of 1-0 and 1-1. Here is the full set of digits zero through eleven:
By the way, this is just one proposal out of many. To read more, check out the Dozenal Society of Great Britain.
Now, since these characters are new and not widely used, they're not formally encoded anywhere. Until they gain widespread recognition and earn their code points in Unicode, we can approximate them with @ and #, respectively (which is consistent with another base twelve scheme I read, and what I'll use for the rest of this article).
In place of the ones, tens, and hundreds places, we have the ones, dozens, and gross places. The dozens place is named by tacking "-do" onto the end of the dozen's place number. Thus, the dozenal number 873 would be read "Eight gross, seven-do three." In base ten, this would be equal to 8 * 144 + 7 * 12 + 3, or 1239. Be sure not to mistake the dozenal 10 for "ten" -- the proper reading is "dozen" or "one-do." "Ten" is written @.
Like our base ten system, we group digits into threes with systematic names -- in place of thousands, millions, and billions, we have mizzens, bizzens, and trizzens.
To help you out, here is a chart showing the names of several base-twelve numbers and their equivalents in base ten:
| Number (dozenal) | Read as | Base Ten |
| 1 | One | 1 |
| 2 | Two | 2 |
| 3 | Three | 3 |
| 9 | Nine | 9 |
| @ | Ten | 10 |
| # | Eleven | 11 |
| 10 | Dozen (One-do) | 12 |
| 16 | One-do Six | 18 |
| 20 | Two-do | 24 |
| 84 | Eight-do Four | 100 |
| 100 | Gross | 144 |
| 194 | One Gross Nine-do Four | 256 |
| 1,000 | Mizzen | 1,728 |
| 10,000 | Do Mizzen | 20,736 |
| 100,000 | Gross Mizzen | 248,832 |
| 106 | Bizzen | ~2.99×106 |
| 107 | Do Bizzen | ~3.58×107 |
| 108 | Gross Bizzen | ~4.30×108 |
| 109 | Trizzen | ~5.16×109 |
| 10@ | Do Trizzen | ~6.19×1010 |
| 10# | Gross Trizzen | ~7.43×1011 |
| 1010 | Quadrizzen | ~8.92×1012 |
| 1013 | Quintizzen | ~1.54×1016 |
| 1016 | Sextizzen | ~2.66×1019 |
| 1019 | Septizzen | |
| 1020 | Octizzen | |
| 1023 | Nonizzen | |
| 1026 | Decizzen | |
| 1029 | Onizzen | |
| 1030 | Douizzen | |
| 1033 | Un-douizzen | |
| 1036 | do-douizzen | |
| 1060 | Bidouizzen | |
| 1063 | Un-bidouizzen | |
| 1063 | Do-bidouizzen | |
| 1090 | Triadouizzen | |
| 10100 | Tetradouizzen | |
| 2.2×10364 | Two-do Two Do-bidou-grouizzen | |
| 0.6 | Point Six (one half) | 0.5 |
| 0.4 | Point Four (one third) | 0.333... |
| 0.3 | Point Three (one fourth) | 0.25 |
| 0.2 | Point Two (one sixth) | 0.1666... |
| 0.124972497... | (one tenth) | 0.1 |
| 0.1 | Point One (one dozenth) | 0.08333... |
| 0.01 | Point Oh-One (one grosseth) | 0.0069444... |
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