4 ms·

Then he should've used capital letters. mm means millimeters. Edit: you guys really will downvote anything, won't you?

tomc1985 9y ago
In my experience it is pretty common to see it used both ways. I'm not from the UK though, and why they would eschew the simple-and-obvious m and b suffixes in favor of alternatives, especially when Europeans love to lecture us about how metric is so neat and intuitive. Probably has something to do with the root words -- mil means 'thousand' in a lot of latin languages, and a thousand is M in roman numerals, and I heard somewhere that "MM" stands for "mil mil" or "million million" which, in the context of M equaling 1,000, woudl make sense.
- beedogs 9y ago
  > why they would eschew the simple-and-obvious m and b suffixes in favor of alternatives Because not everyone is an American. Those suffixes are not used in other countries.
  - tomc1985 9y ago
    Yes but in all English hundred means 100, thousand means 1000, million means 1000000. 'MM' means... what exactly? Without prior training, can you tell just by looking at it?
    - beedogs 9y ago
      In accounting, M has long been used as 'thousand'. Therefore, MM was used for million, as it's a thousand thousand. This is something that I didn't think would be this contentious. It's an old standard. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/181917/mixing-use-of-k-for-thousands-and-mm-for-millions https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/181917/mixing-us...
      - tomc1985 9y ago
        This clarifies exactly... thanks for the link!
  - tomc1985 9y ago
    More troubling is 'm' being used to refer to thousands, when the rest of the English-speaking financial world uses 'k' (which also makes little sense to me)
    - kbenson 9y ago
      > English-speaking financial world uses 'k' (which also makes little sense to me) It likely comes from SI prefixes. While there's not a standard base unit for currency, the fact they work for so many other units lends them towards easily inferred usage when applied to others. 1: http://www.npl.co.uk/reference/measurement-units/si-prefixes/ http://www.npl.co.uk/reference/measurement-units/si-prefixes...
    - harry8 9y ago
      k = kilo - prefix for one thousand.

tomc1985 9y ago

In my experience it is pretty common to see it used both ways. I'm not from the UK though, and why they would eschew the simple-and-obvious m and b suffixes in favor of alternatives, especially when Europeans love to lecture us about how metric is so neat and intuitive. Probably has something to do with the root words -- mil means 'thousand' in a lot of latin languages, and a thousand is M in roman numerals, and I heard somewhere that "MM" stands for "mil mil" or "million million" which, in the context of M equaling 1,000, woudl make sense.

beedogs 9y ago
> why they would eschew the simple-and-obvious m and b suffixes in favor of alternatives Because not everyone is an American. Those suffixes are not used in other countries.
- tomc1985 9y ago
  Yes but in all English hundred means 100, thousand means 1000, million means 1000000. 'MM' means... what exactly? Without prior training, can you tell just by looking at it?
  - beedogs 9y ago
    In accounting, M has long been used as 'thousand'. Therefore, MM was used for million, as it's a thousand thousand. This is something that I didn't think would be this contentious. It's an old standard. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/181917/mixing-use-of-k-for-thousands-and-mm-for-millions https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/181917/mixing-us...
    - tomc1985 9y ago
      This clarifies exactly... thanks for the link!
- tomc1985 9y ago
  More troubling is 'm' being used to refer to thousands, when the rest of the English-speaking financial world uses 'k' (which also makes little sense to me)
  - kbenson 9y ago
    > English-speaking financial world uses 'k' (which also makes little sense to me) It likely comes from SI prefixes. While there's not a standard base unit for currency, the fact they work for so many other units lends them towards easily inferred usage when applied to others. 1: http://www.npl.co.uk/reference/measurement-units/si-prefixes/ http://www.npl.co.uk/reference/measurement-units/si-prefixes...
  - harry8 9y ago
    k = kilo - prefix for one thousand.