[Foundation-l] 2008/2009 Wikimedia Foundation Annual Report

[William Pietri]

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