reading aloud Money abbreviations English Language Learners Stack Exchange

I have worked in equity markets for 20 years and poor abbreviations drive me crazy. Regretfully, until the USA goes metric retained earnings there’s going to continue to be problem with this. I’ve found answers on the web but also got conflicting answers from financial professionals (coworkers). Explore Our Course LibraryEnhance your leadership skills with our diverse selection of courses. Take your abilities to the next level and become a more effective leader and team player. Rather than use the barred M, however, accounting went with MM as an abbreviation for a million.

Accounting Crash Courses

Unfortunately, there isn’t a consistent approach to labeling units. The least ambiguous approach is to simply write them out in words, such as “$ thousands.” This is Corporate Finance Institute’s recommended method, to avoid any potential confusion. Another driver of using MM was the need to streamline amounts in printed financial statements, reports, and documents. Whether etched by hand or printed, space was at a premium on these pages. MM enabled fitting large monetary values concisely into tables and ledgers.

• You might come across “mm” in scientific or engineering fields, where different values are required, and they can reach well into the millions as a unit.
• He is the sole author of all the materials on AccountingCoach.com.
• If, say, you use it for both units and dollars in the same document, separate the different categories so your readers don’t get confused.
• The Romans incorporated seven letters to represent different numbers for a standard counting method to simplify that situation.
• If you see “one quintillion,” you know that it’s a lot – and have spatial awareness of what it represents.
• I generally use $___MM, which was, and still is, often used by accountants and economists.

Learn more about our services and how we can help you.

Once you get above that amount, you’d say billion or trillion instead of using the numbers. This methodology differs from everyday slang, which takes the first letter from each word as the primary abbreviation. The prevailing thought as to why Romans used letters to represent numerical values instead of numbers involves the fingers on a person’s hand.

• “M” is the most common abbreviation for “million.” If you’re going to abbreviate “million,” it would usually turn into this form.
• Unfortunately, there isn’t a consistent approach to labeling units.
• If the company sells 26,000 units, the accountant can record that as 26M units.
• Your sentences come from this report from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, who is a financial firm, so it is understandable that they would use MM to refer to millions.

What are the correct abbreviations for millions, billions and trillions in a financial context?

So the convention of using M for thousands and MM for millions originated in Roman numeral-based accounting. Your sentences come from this report from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, who is a financial firm, so it is understandable that they would use MM to refer to millions. “MM” is an old-fashioned abbreviation, but it still sees some usage today. You might come across “mm” in scientific or engineering fields, where different values are required, and they can reach well into the millions as a unit. Does not make any guarantee or another promise as to any results that may be obtained from using our content. No one should make any investment decision without first consulting his or her own financial advisor and conducting his or her own research and due diligence.

• It makes the most sense considering that “million” starts with the letter “M.” Most abbreviations follow this standard practice.
• After analyzing its history and modern use, I have a new appreciation for how deeply rooted MM is within finance culture, likely to endure for the foreseeable future.
• However, it’s fairly uncommon for “Million” to be abbreviated outside of scientific circles.
• I decided to take a deep dive into the origins and rationale behind “MM” to better understand this unique element of finance culture.
• Most financial sums are tracked in ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, and ten thousands.
• To avoid confusion, the term $1MM is often used to designate a million, while the generic “MM” represents 2,000.

In finance and accounting, MM (or lowercase “mm”) commonly denotes that the units of figures presented are in millions. In this context, MM is the same as writing “M multiplied by M,” which is equal to “1,000 times 1,000,” which equals 1,000,000 (one million). If you had a commercial property valued at $92 million, a modern writer would likely abbreviate the expression by saying it was worth $92M. In accounting and financial analysis terms, we know that reads as 92 thousand dollars, but the context allows us to understand the expression’s intent. In accounting speak, a written “MM” means a million, whether the accountant is referring to units, dollars, euros or shares. Rather than writing $400,000,000 or $400 million, the accountant can use the MM abbreviation and write $400MM instead.

The cardinal number is automatically recognized when using M or MM in accounting. Even if you have a significant figure to represent, such as 12 billion, you could still write it as 1200MM, which would be understood. The Greek option is typically capitalized when multiple abbreviations are used for accounting purposes. Roman abbreviations are usually not capitalized when using this method (1MM vs. 1mm), but each firm has different standards they follow. The seven letters in Roman numerals are I, V, X, L, C, D, and M. These figures have values of 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, 500, and 1,000.

Before “k” was adopted as the colloquial way of writing a thousand (i.e. $35k to mean $35,000), it was common to use “M” instead; “M” being the Roman Numeral for 1,000. As a result, “M” simply became shorthand for adding three zeros and thus “MM” became the shorthand for adding six zeros. I have seen million, billion, and trillion abbreviated as M, B, and T respectively. However, I would not bet that that is a standard abbreviation. You can see it on ancient French and British ledgers from the 18th and 19th centuries where “M₤” represents £1000 and “MM₤” is £1million.

There are actually what does mm mean in money a few different ways that 1,000,000 can be expressed when it comes to writing dollar amounts. Million can also be represented using “mn” and “m,” so an individual may see $4m, $4mn or simply $4 million. Another option is to use the “M” for 1,000 and represent $4 million as $4,000M. The Authorized Share Capital of Company is $15,000,000 shares of $ 100 each i.e. $ 1,500,000,000. In internet record keeping, for instance, CPM is the cost per thousand impressions of an internet ad.