Speed Bump #2,158

Grammar Nazism

Seen on Twatter recently:

The problem is that our system has a crisis of legitimacy.

ex-President Applesauce illegally and deliberately imported somewhere between 10mm and 20mm illegal aliens into the USA and illegally provided them with tax dollars you and I earned on the sweat of our brows.

I’m not taking issue with the argument, as always, but I am taking issue with its presentation.

This abbreviation of millions and thousands has always been problematic for me.  The problem, as usual, starts with the Romans and their poxy language, while their stupid numbering system also comes into play.

Latin for 1,000:  mille (M).  So 2,000 (e.g. in dates):  MM.

Unfortunately, when we try to make the M into a million, we have to multiply the Ms into MM.  See the problem?  While numerically it makes sense (1 millimeter = one-thousandth of a metre = 1mm), linguistically we get into all sorts of trouble because when we try to abbreviate millions, as above, the appearance of, say, 20 million (20mm) comes out as 20 millimeters because it’s what we’re used to seeing, thanks to the equally-poxy metric system.

Frankly, we can overcome all confusion by not using abbreviations altogether, i.e. writing “10 million to 20 million”, or even “10-20 million” (inferior, but almost acceptable) instead of “10mm-20mm”.

Mixing Latin with metric is where we all fall over, by the way, because in the metric usage, “m” is also the abbreviation for “metre”, e.g. “Olympic 100m sprint”.  Some have tried to compensate by capitalizing the “m” when you need to express “thousand”, but that muddies the literary reading even more.

Lastly, a free box of .22 ammo goes to the Reader who can first explain to me what “milliard” officially means.

 

14 comments

  1. To add even more confusion, M is the metric prefix for million (mega)

    A milliard is 1000 million, which you septics call a billion. A British billion is a million million.

    1. “A British billion is a million million” which we call a trillion — as do the Brits, nowadays.

      I blame Coca-Cola.

  2. At least we no longer use qubits.

    So until someone else comes up with a common unit we are stuck with Meters ( the length of a Roman Soldiers stride ) …… or a ” Foot” literally the length of some old Kings foot.

    2. We no longer use cubits, not qubits. A cubit is a biblical unit of length. A qubit is a quantum bit, the most basic unit of information in quantum computing.

  3. Hmm, back when I was a wee lad, the Frog teacher insisted it was 1000 million Francs, a figure so astoundingly large only Germans knew how to use it. Something about Weimar banking I suppose.
    But then fast forward to Weimar States of America and we see the number bandied about as if it were pocket change.
    Sigh!

  5. Oh, FFS! It’s going to kill someone to type out “million”? It’s not like you’re sending a telegram and being charged by the letter. Just another example of some writer trying to impress the rest of us with how smart they aren’t.

  6. How many Mexicans in a millimeter? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

  7. Modernity:
    mm – millimeter
    MM – million
    K – thousand (i.e. 24K sq. ft.)
    B – billion
    T – Trillion
    C is one hundred in Roman Numerals, but we do quite well just adding two zero’s to a numeric prefix (100, 200, 700)
    and, does anyone still use D for 500

  8. the only “real” problem is the extreme underestimation of the numberof illegals President Applesauce allowed into the country over his 4-year illegimacy; quite a few people have (perhaps correctly) estimated the true number to be somewhere between 40,000,000 and 50,000,000.
    There: cleared that problem!
    BTW: a milliard is an obsolete term equivalent to 10⁹

  10. Retired engineer here. The solution, to me, is obvious. For example:

    22 million is 22E6.
    438 thousand is 438E3.
    33 trillion is 33E12.
    87 billion is 87E9.

    And so on. I rather doubt that this will take off, but it’s unambiguous.

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