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> 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 o
by 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 agoYes 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 agoIn 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 agoThis clarifies exactly... thanks for the link!
- tomc1985 9y agoMore 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 agok = kilo - prefix for one thousand.