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Comment by dbcooper | Hacker News Reader

Why on earth would someone abbreviate million as MM?

You know, I've always thought of "MM" as "millions," plural, the same way "p. 55" is "page 55" and "pp. 55-56" is "pages 55-56." No idea if that's common usage/interpretation though.

it's a financial notation, which bothers me too.

Pretty standard/common practice.

When discussing certain quantities, including money, it's common to use MM such as $100MM.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_prefix#Similar_symbols_in_ab...

Is this just a standard/common practice in America? I have yet to see it used anywhere else but then I am primarily exposed to UK/European news sources.

I think it's used more often in finance here. It is a bit awkward when you have to check if something is "millions" or "millimeters" though.

> Pretty standard/common practice.

It's a common practise, but it's not a standard AFAIK. It's from latin mille which means 1000, so M=1000, and MM=1000000.

Unfortunately there is also a much more widely used international standard where k=1000 and M=1000000, so the M/MM forms are to say the least, confusing, and ought to be scrapped.

On the other hand, I've never seen anyone use 10M to mean 10k, so there doesn't seem to be any actual confusion caused by this.

1000 = k

1000000 = either m or M or MM

It's a common practise

That's the definition of a standard in the English language.

but it's not a standard AFAIK

There are no English Language standardisation bodies.

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