4 ms·
Why do people continue to use MM for "million", especially outside of the context of money?
by x3n0ph3n3 11y ago
Why do people continue to use MM for "million", especially outside of the context of money?
- nostromo 11y agoM is often used to mean 1,000 from the Roman Numeral, so using it to mean "one million" is confusing. It's not just finance, but in other contexts too, such as online marketing CPM = Cost Per Thousand. MM then is used to denote a thousand thousands, or one million. In online marketing sometimes you'll see CPMM = Cost Per Million.
- sebastianavina 11y agok is used for 1000, M for millions... damn americans.
- killface 11y agoblame the brits, not the americans.
- jeroen 11y agoK, not k.
- tempestn 11y agoActually, he's right; the abbreviation for kilo (thousand) is lower-case k. The abbreviation for mega (million) is upper case M. (Lower case m is milli (thousandth).)
- yen223 11y agoUnless you're talking about kilobytes, in which case k = 1024. Unless you're a strict follower of the IEC standard, in which case k = 1000, and what I was talking about was a kibibyte. Standards are hard. It's not just the Americans' fault
- JoshTriplett 11y agoWhen, whether talking about money or not, have you ever seen someone write 100M to mean "a hundred thousand"? That would be completely ridiculous. Roman numerals are not used for that.
- nostromo 11y agoIt's used exactly like that in finance all the time. http://www.accountingcoach.com/blog/what-does-m-and-mm-stand-for http://www.accountingcoach.com/blog/what-does-m-and-mm-stand... http://english.stackexchange.com/a/182072 http://english.stackexchange.com/a/182072
- bjterry 11y agoThat guy's response makes no sense to me. I worked in finance and banking for five years and didn't even once see M used to represent thousand. Perhaps times have changed and that used to be common. k (thousand) and M, m or MM (millions) were used though.