By convention:

• "one-zero binary" (people rarely say "base 2" in my experience)
• "octal one-zero" or "one-zero octal"
• "hex one-zero"
• "hex one-eff"

If you say "hex ten" to a developer, they will mentally translate it to "hex one-zero" anyway, so you're better off saying "hex one-zero" in the first place.

In general, developers tend to

• pronounce every digit in bases other than decimal
• pronounce groups of four in binary when unambiguous (e.g. "1011" is said "ten-eleven", but "1000" is pronounced "one-zero-zero-zero")

That being said, 0xdeadbeef is always pronounced "dead beef." But then, you've entered the realm of hexspeak.

In notations other than decimal, always read out the symbols, which is what they are.

Do not even call the individual elements as digits when the number system is not binary, decimal or octal because in higher notations, alphabets are also used, which will create the illogical (not technically incorrect, maybe) use of digit.

When we read 'one' in say, hex, we are not referring to a value of unity, only the name of the symbol.

I find the simplest to pronounce any numeral in any base using any symbols would be to organize the numerals in bytes of three. For example

123 456 789 abc def in hexadecimal

I'd call this one, two, three - tera; four, five, six - giga; seven, eight, nine - mega; ay, bee, cee - kilo; dee, ee, eff

This method's advantage is that it makes describing a numeral in any base simple and correct:

001 000 000 000 binary is one giga.
020 000 000 decimal is two, zero mega
a00 000 hexadecimal is ay, zero, zero kilo

One should be careful because 123 giga hexadecimal is not one hundred and twenty-three giga, it should be viewed as:

(1*10²+2*10¹+3)*10⁹ all in hexadecimal notation

Another example, 101 giga binary should be viewed as:

(1*10¹⁰+0*10¹+1)*10⁹ all in binary notation

And lastly for something familiar 456 giga decimal should be viewed as:

(4*10²+5*10¹+6)*10⁹ all in decimal notation

This notation coincidence with four hundred fifty-six giga in decimal notation.

The quantity these numerals represents is another story. For example 144 (one, four, four) is not a number; it is a numeral that could represent a number. Where as numbers one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, thirty, forty, etc are all specific numbers representing a specific quantity in english.

In addition one hundred forty-four and a gross (twelve times twelve) both represent the same number. This same number could be represented by fourteen-ten and four or seven-twenty and four. I could go on and on. Of course all this requires some knowledge of multiplication and addition expect for a gross.

One could say that 10 (one, zero) binary is a number and they would be correct in mathematics. However one zero binary is jargon means nothing in Common English. It must be translated to 'two' if you wish to be understood.

The following joke brought me here: "There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't." I used to think that it could only be funny when read...making it perfect for sharing on the Internet. This is because I assumed that the pronunciation in the joke would be "two kinds"

But when it occurred to me that if said out loud as "ten kinds", it is even funnier since binary is to rarely thought of as anything other that being read as the digits aloud. That is, one would expect that number if read in binary to be read as "one zero kinds".

Now, I'm convinced that the proper way to read it "ten kinds". Just as if you are trying to say the following: x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x In base 10, that's 15 (pronounced "thirteen".
In base 8, that's 17 (pronounced "fifteen". In binary, that's 1111 (Pronounced "one thousand, one hundred and eleven).

If you were examining 1111 if it were a base ten number you'd have: 1*10^3 + 1*10^2 + 1*10^1 + 1*10^0 which equals 1111 in base ten If you were examining that same number, 1111, in base 2, you'd do the following base ten calculation: 1*2^3 + 1*2^2 + 1*2^1 + 1*2^0 which equals 15 in base ten.

You are still bound to use tradition base ten terminology to describe the base itself. When saying that each column represents a power of ten you wouldn't say a power of "x x x x x x x x x x". But even the word "decimal" case refers to what is traditionally our Base Ten meaning of "ten".

But once the base is established, it seems to me that the number should be read as the digits appear. Thus 10 is read as ten regardless of the base, etc.

Pronouncing the hexadecimal letters A through F

The default pronunciation for the letters are simply their English names, "ay, bee, see, dee, ee, eff."

When reading off a hex MAC address, I have both used and heard the NATO phonetic alphabet used for the letters A through F. Since both the speaker and the listener know that a hex string is coming, they will pronounce

1A-48-0F-CF-3B-24

as "One alpha, four eight, zero foxtrot, charlie foxtrot, three bravo, two four."

With hexadecimal numbers, I have also heard a somewhat simplified phonetic alphabet.

A=Abel
B=Baker (or Boy)
C=Charlie
D=Dog
E=Easy
F=Fox

So the above string would be pronounced "One abel, four eight, zero fox, charlie fox, three baker, two four."

Last week, I provisioned a modem and had to pronounce the MAC address of said device. I'm a AE speaker and the hearer was Filipino. I pronounced the address using the simplified phonetic alphabet, and he confirmed the address using the NATO phonetic alphabet.

There are other spelling alphabets used around the world but the NATO phonetic alphabet is the most common.

Pronouncing individual digits versus pronouncing as if they comprised a decimal number

When I have taught computer science classes, I would always pronounce a binary number like 1010 as "one oh one oh, base 2." To pronounce it as if it were a decimal number, "one thousand and ten" seemed to invite confusion. Thus, I would never pronounce 10₂ as "ten, base two" or "ten, binary."

This professor, who teaches cryptography and algorithms, uses a similar convention.

If decimal, just say the number (with the word "decimal" if we're mixing contexts)

If any other base, read the digits and say the name of the base

So I might say, "therefore the answer is one-zero-one binary, or 5 decimal."

I would never call 10 hex "ten". Nor would I call 10 binary "two."

Said professor pronounces, "one zero one," while I might shorten and say "one oh one."

(And please click through to the picture of the T-shirt. It's only funny if you misread "one zero base 2" as "ten.")

One HBO Silicon Valley episode

I taught Computer Science back in the day when mighty dinosaurs ruled the earth, punch cards were on the wane, and floppy disks were still floppy.

Acknowledging that language evolves, here is a link to a blog entitled "How to pronounce hexadecimal", dated 2015. The blog author is Bzarg.

It includes a dialogue from an HBO series, Silicon Valley:

Kid: Here it is: Bit… soup. It’s like alphabet soup, BUT… it’s ones and zeros instead of letters.

Bachman: {silence}

Kid: ‘Cause it’s binary? You know, binary’s just ones and zeroes.

Bachman: Yeah, I know what binary is. Jesus Christ, I memorized the hexadecimal times tables when I was fourteen writing machine code. Okay? Ask me what nine times F is. It’s fleventy-five. I don’t need you to tell me what binary is.

Bzarg goes on to propose a pronunciation convention.

For the hex digits in the units place, pronounce the usual 0-9 and "ay, bee, see, dee, ee, eff."

For the hex digits in the sixteen's place, the author proposes these (based on "fleventy"): "atta, bibbity, city, dickety, ebbity, fleventy."

For four hex digits, Bzarg suggests separating each two digits by "bitey."

So the MAC address above might be:

1A-48 = "abteen bitey forty-eight" 0F-CF = "eff bitey city-eff" 3B-24 = "thirty-bee bitey twenty-four"

Despite Bzarg's heroic efforts (and an echo from http://www.xanthir.com/b4ej0), I have not observed this in practice, even once.

How to pronounce your examples

I think your examples depend on whether you are doing math or doing programming.

In math, numbers in other bases are written with the base following as a subscript. (Please see https://math.stackexchange.com/a/638782/5220 for 1100₂ = C₁₆.) Math also routinely talks about logarithms in base 2, base 10, or natural logarithms like this (with the base following the log as a subscript):

log₂ (pronounced "log base 2")

log₁₀ (pronounced "log base 10")

ln (pronounced "log")

So I would pronounce your numbers in a math context as:

• 10₂, pronounced "one zero base two"
• 10₈, pronounced "one zero base eight"
• 10₁₆, pronounced "one zero base sixteen"
• 1F₁₆, pronounced "one eff base sixteen"

In programming, there is a convention that literals in other bases are preceded with a 0b, 0o, or 0x for binary, octal, or hexadecimal, respectively. (See this proposal for Python "Integer Literal Support and Syntax" at https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3127/).

The proposal is that:

octal literals must now be specified with a leading "0o" or "0O" instead of "0";

binary literals are now supported via a leading "0b" or "0B"; and

provision will be made for binary numbers in string formatting.

(Python, C, C++, and Java already precede hexadecimal literals with "0x").

Their motivation was:

The default octal representation of integers is silently confusing to people unfamiliar with C-like languages. It is extremely easy to inadvertently create an integer object with the wrong value, because '013' means 'decimal 11', not 'decimal 13', to the Python language itself, which is not the meaning that most humans would assign to this literal.

(Note the Pythonic displeasure with the C and C++ convention that writes an 13₈ as 013.)

So with this in mind, if you were pronouncing your examples in a programming context, the literal is preceded by a base marker and the pronunciation follows suit:

• 10₂, written 0b10, pronounced "binary one zero" or "binary one oh"
• 10₈, written 0o10 in Python or 010 in C++, pronounced "octal one zero"
• 10₁₆, written 0x10, pronounced "hex one zero"
• 1F₁₆, written 0x1F, pronounced "hex one foxtrot" or "hex one eff" or "hex one fox"

See this 3-minute educational video (from the Schoolhouse Rock series) ...

This is base 12, the two extra digits are pronounced "dek" and "el. The numeral for last finger is written "10" and pronounced "do" (dough, doe). It stands for "dozen" I guess.