Quote:
Originally Posted by Fore
Not from accounting world, we regularly to nearly always in the USA used:
1MM = 1,000,000
1B = 1,000,000,000
1M = 1,000 but rarely (though increasing) used 1K
We did this not only for dollars but many (not all) other units. We used these even in formal documents like contracts albeit normally specifically defined in addendum/ appendix (or whatever proper term is).
We did not use 1XX for 100 because there is no savings or ease of clarity
Lol, that is all really messed up (apart from 1B for a billion). M is the Roman numeral for 1000, and is also the first letter in Latin based languages of the word for 1000, mille in Italian and French, and mil in Spanish and Portuguese.
But it makes no sense to have MM as an abbreviation for million, when it literally means 2,000 in Roman numerals.
If accountancy terminology was all standardised as Latin based language derivatives, then it might make sense to have 1M meaning one million and 1m meaning one thousand, because the Latin based language words for a million also begin with M, millioni, million, millón and milhão, so a small m and a capital M could differentiate between a thousand and a million.
But using MM for a million is frankly laughable, certainly in the English speaking world or English language economies or commerce, because it is using Latin word abbreviations and it isn't even correct as MM, unless it's changed to MxM.
Me asking if 1M in accountancy represented 1,000 was me 100% making a flippant joke, and I am amazed, and highly amused, that it turns out that it actually sometimes is!!
Maybe I can turn up at Hustler with a thousand bucks and stick a little note on top of it that says "1M" and they'll give me a million in chips for it, based on my accountant's say so!
The Romans actually had a letter/symbol for a million, which was a barred M (sorry, I can't get one to copy and paste into this post), the bar was called a vinculum, written over a numeral to express the numeral was a number 1000 times its original value. So that's really what should be used in accountancy to represent a million, if anything, a barred M, not the rofl MM!
Last edited by PokerPlayingDunces; 02-08-2023 at 06:22 PM.
Reason: HTML formatting issues & added the 1M (1 thousand) for 1 million chips joke.