Coming from the financial industry, I recall "MM" as being used for one million and M as used for a thousand, which allways irked.



http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_proper_...

The standard financial abbreviation for million is MM, e.g. $300 MM.

Most people will write $1M

There is no standard abbreviation for million.

For those that use a pseudo-metric abbreviation, it would be $1M, where "M" stands for mega, or million. This follows the use of "K" (kilo) as an abbreviation for thousands.

Also commonly used is an abbreviation based loosely on Roman numerals. Using this format, $1M represents $1,000 and $1MM for $1,000,000. While it is accurate that Roman numeral "M" stands for 1000, the "MM" represents 2000, not 1 million. The correct representation for 1,000,000 in Roman numerals would be an M with a horizontal line drawn above it. The horizontal line indicated the numeral was to be multiplied by 1000.

Thanks, NM - I had seen the WiKi article, but still had my doubts :-))

Avoid confusion and write out
$1 million (instead of $1m or $1mn),
$1 billion (instead of $1b or $1bn),
etc.

kk, That's what I'd advised doing, or suggested asking the mentor - but the mentor just said: It's your thesis. When I worked at a German university, each and every "Doktorvater" had his own set of style guides to be adhered to, which helped immensely when proof-reading. My entire working life has been spent in Germany, so I have no past experience on what an American company (here in Germany) would expect, in this case.

Well, writing it out is certainly not wrong. If you look at websites of organizations that deal with large amounts of money(the IMF, for example), you always see millions and billions written out explicitly

The Chicago Manual doesn't list any abbreviation in its abbreviations section, and elsewhere it says only


______________

9.28 Very large monetary amounts. Like other very large round numbers, sums of money may be expressed by a mixture of numerals and spelled-out numbers ...

A price of $3 million was agreed on.
The military requested an additional $7.3 billion.
The marquess sold his ancestral home for £25.5 million.

In a financial context, thousands are sometimes represented by K.

Three-bedroom condominiums are priced at $350K.

______________


That said, I personally think that if you really have a lot of numbers, it would be fine to go with $5m / £5m / €5m. I can't imagine anyone having trouble understanding that as long as the currency symbol is there.

However, I've seen $5bn but never $5b to my knowledge. That might complicate the issue and make the full words more advisable.

I have also seen it with a capital letter, $5M / £5M / €5M, though that may be more in journalism.

I've never seen $5MM in this context and would be afraid that that could be confusing, unless the writer (and it should be his or her job to track down a style guide in his or her field) comes across journals or books in the field where that's clearly the practice.

kk, Thanks for that link - reminded me of one error I had overlooked, as in: not thought about in "centuries" - we put the $ € first, amount second :-))

Thanks, hm! We "cross-posted" - the amounts are all in €, and I had sent her the excerpt from the EU style guide. The student had abbreviated it using "mill.", which I didn't like one bit.

Thank you, all!

hm, Your "...unless the writer (and it should be his or her job to track down a style guide in his or her field) comes across journals or books in the field where that's clearly the practice.

triggered an idea I hadn't yet thought of - I googled the company, and "struck gold." They happened to have their annual report posted online, and actually use "MM," which I've never seen, either:

Net Sales and Revenues (MM)
Operating Profit (MM)
Net Income (MM)

Äh, im Abkürzungsverzeichnis einfach ein paar Zeilen der Art M = 10^x hinpacken?!