On 01/25/2010 10:26 AM, Cary Bass wrote:
"M" before the abbreviation of a unit means 1,000, but on its own
it is far more commonly used to mean 1,000,000. "m" never means 1,000 - it means 1/1,000 when used with the abbreviation of a unit, but on its own it usually means 1,000,000 too.
I beg to differ, Thomas. It may be an Americanism (I would have to find a source for that), but "M" is generally understood to refer to thousands in currency. It comes directly from the Latin "Mille".
If there's one mailing list in the world where readers will forgive me for digging into this, I imagine it's this one.
The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and Bloomberg all use "m" after currency to denote million. E.g.:
"Yahoo! reported a profit of $153m in the fourth quarter." [1] "Boston Scientific To Pay $22M To Settle DOJ Investigation" [2] "Avatar takes $242m globally in first weekend" [3] "Waterland May Bid $100M for MetLife's Taiwan Unit, Times Says" [4]
The New York Times, as far as I can tell, always writes the word out. And Reuters seems to use both mln and m.
The only common use I can think of where M doesn't represent millions is in the advertising term CPM, or cost per mille:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_per_mille
William
[1] http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15406816 [2] http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20091223-710631.html [3] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/94f9e866-ee99-11de-944c-00144feab49a.html