When referring to a number of millions I generally now use "Mil" not "M" , so as to avoid confusion between old and new uses of "M". I don't think there is a "defined" difference of when to use which term, only as T has implied, "where the base unit is understood". Getting technical, proper representation using roman numerals would be simply MM with a bar over it. But in the financial industry it is commonly understood that M represent 1, and MM represents 1,, However, in other industries such as the "tech world" M is commonly used and understood to represent 1,, M in the metric system stands for Mega 1,, So, both K and M can be proper.
Usage depends on whether you are thinking "roman numeral" or "metric". The key as previously posted is to be consistent and provide a footnote as to the base unit. If you use M for 1, then MM could represent 1,,, but properly M with a bar over it. I always thought that "M" and "K" were interchangeable for 1, for reasons stated above and blamed the lazy press for making "M" mean Million when they wrote headlines.
And "K" in computer terms is more accurately 1,, if you were interested. John Maxwell. Actually, 1 billion using the metric system would be "G". I use it all the time balancing my savings account! But B works for me too, 'cause you may need G for Gazillion Trillion! And that brings up another 1, abbreviation - "Hey Lefty, boss says a thousand g's if you snuff him out tonight".
This was a great thread! I have had problems with inexperienced Note Department associates reading the abbreviations wrong not their fault as our officers are not consistent in the usage resulting in the wrong CRA revenue code being applied. We discovered this during an integrity check a few years ago and it resulted in a whole bunch of work.
Be careful! I once coined the word "trimagna" to explain the tendency of policitians and economists to put money on a logarithmic scale, something like the Richter scale. Their counting sequence goes "million, billion, trillion", emphasizing every third order of magnitude. Likewise, MMM in roman numerals means three thousand, not a thousand times a thousand times a thousand, or one billion.
For an overview of roman numerals, see CMOS 9. Nonetheless, if K is used for thousands, then according to the same convention M mega would be used for millions, and billions would be represented by G giga. Unlike the conventions in science, which are universal assuming you adhere to the international system of units, or SI , the conventions in finance vary, not only by country but also among institutions, even within the same country.
See also CMOS 9. For this, we should credit the Romans. M is the Roman numeral for thousand and MM is meant to convey one thousand-thousand — or million. However, truth be known, if there were an ancient Roman here and we asked him to interpret our use of Roman numerals, we would find that technically MM means two thousand and MMM means three thousand, so there are flaws in this tradition.
And you would be correct, thanks to the Greeks. K comes from the Greek word kilo which means a thousand. The Greeks would likewise show million as M, short for Mega.
So if we stay consistent with the Greek abbreviations, then billion would be shown as a letter G Giga. Think of your computer expressing bytes of memory as kilobyte, megabyte or gigabyte. They are using B for billion. What can I say? So much for consistency. We sometimes have to code switch and use context to determine what the author is telling us.
0コメント