[Wikipedia-l] I'll see your milliard, and raise you a thousand million...

[Craig Franklin]

Scríobh David Friedland:

>would appear to an en-gb reader as
>
>a plan was formulated by which Germany was to pay 226 milliard gold marks
>
>and to an en-us reader as
>
>a plan was formulated by which Germany was to pay 226 billion gold marks

This is clumsy, but manageable, when there's only en-us and en-gb to worry
about.  Unfortunately, there are more than two dialects of English.

For instance, in Australian English, the word "milliard" is unknown (I had
to go and look it up to see what you were on about).  The sentence in en-au
would be "a plan was formulated by which Germany was to pay 226 thousand
million gold marks." (a thousand million being a 1 followed by nine zeroes).
I've no idea what sort of dialectical differences exist in other English
dialects, but I assume that they're there also.

I mean, it probably could be done, but coming up with alternatives for
en-us, en-gb, en-au, en-ie, en-za, etc etc, would just be a massive pain,
and lets be honest, who has time for that sort of work.  The system works
fine as it is now (although putting the number in decimal form afterwards
would probably help, and is my policy when there might be confusion caused).

- Craig Franklin

-------------------
Craig Franklin
PO Box 764
Ashgrove, Q, 4060
Australia
http://www.halo-17.net - Australia's Favourite Source of Indie Music, Art,
and Culture.