In message 001401c4ab8a$af7cba40$69971bd3@equinox, Craig Franklin craig@halo-17.net writes
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).
I agree. "Thousand million" is absolutely unambiguous. I would say that "milliard" has not been used in the UK for at least the last 30-40 years, and would not be understood by most readers.