# The MM in a million dollars?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mm-in-a-million-dollars/427771
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [November 26, 2007, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mm-in-a-million-dollars/427771 "2007-11-26T04:13:31Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ParentalAdvisory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParentalAdvisory)
#### Post date: [November 26, 2007, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mm-in-a-million-dollars/427771/1 "2007-11-26T04:13:31Z")
I may have missed class that day, and couldn’t find much in google or wiki… What does the MM in a million dollars represent? You know, like $10MM. I thought it might be a Roman numeral reference, but MM = 2000 and I don’t see a relation. What is MM?
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### Author:  [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)
#### Post date: [November 26, 2007, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mm-in-a-million-dollars/427771/2 "2007-11-26T04:16:28Z")
I have never seen this usage ever. Not once.
But if forced to guess, in Latin (and its daughters) the plural abbreviation is made by doubling the letter. So “EU” would be 'United State" while “EEUU” would be “United States.”
So perhaps “MM” is “Millions.”
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### Author:  [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)
#### Post date: [November 26, 2007, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mm-in-a-million-dollars/427771/3 "2007-11-26T04:19:38Z")
Unfortunately, “MM” is often used to mean “thousand thousand” (that is, 1,000,000). This appears in units of energy and in gas measurements, which often makes me very unhappy as a large number of people use the measurements inconsistently, sometimes inconsistently within the very same contract or specification. In which case Financial and Engineering hilarity does _not_ ensue; typically Legal un-hilarity does instead.
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### Author:  [@ParentalAdvisory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParentalAdvisory)
#### Post date: [November 26, 2007, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mm-in-a-million-dollars/427771/4 "2007-11-26T04:46:15Z")
[QUOTE=Paul in Saudi]
I have never seen this usage ever. Not once.
[/QUOTE]
I see it in news reports all the time.
Here are all kinds of examples:
> **[Google Search](https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%2410mm)**
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### Author:  [@ParentalAdvisory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParentalAdvisory)
#### Post date: [November 26, 2007, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mm-in-a-million-dollars/427771/5 "2007-11-26T04:53:47Z")
[QUOTE=Una Persson]
Unfortunately, “MM” is often used to mean “thousand thousand” (that is, 1,000,000).
[/QUOTE]
Well in a Roman numeral sense, that would makes sense, since M = 1000. But the usage seems misleading, because in RN, MM together is absolutley 2000. It would be weird to see $100,000 represented as $100CC, which I never do see.
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### Author:  [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)
#### Post date: [November 26, 2007, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mm-in-a-million-dollars/427771/6 "2007-11-26T11:55:31Z")
I’ve certainly seen it. And I use it in copy on a general basis. My take on it was always a downstream effect of using ‘M’ for thousand. ‘MM’ meant ‘thousand thousands’ or ‘million’.
Might be weird but it’s certainly in use that way.
I can see how it could bug people, though. Me, I’m still bugged by the use of ‘K’ as ‘thousand’. It should mean 1024, dammit!
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### Author:  [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)
#### Post date: [November 26, 2007, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mm-in-a-million-dollars/427771/7 "2007-11-26T12:13:01Z")
[QUOTE=Jonathan Chance]
I can see how it could bug people, though. Me, I’m still bugged by the use of ‘K’ as ‘thousand’. It should mean 1024, dammit!
[/QUOTE]
Then M should mean 2 **20 and G should mean 2** 30. Which they do in one single, specialized field: Measuring the capacity of computer memory and storage devices. The fact it’s used inconsistently even there has been [the basis of legal fights.](http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/01/231250) (The amount you’re screwed by base-10 versus base-2 increases as disks hold more data. This can only get worse.)
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### Author:  [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)
#### Post date: [November 26, 2007, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mm-in-a-million-dollars/427771/8 "2007-11-26T12:27:23Z")
I think it’s from stock market useage. Simple redundancy does not get confused with anything else.
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [November 26, 2007, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mm-in-a-million-dollars/427771/9 "2007-11-26T12:36:45Z")
[QUOTE=Paul in Saudi]
I have never seen this usage ever. Not once.
[/quote]
I haven’t either.
> [@](#):
>
> But if forced to guess, in Latin (and its daughters) the plural abbreviation is made by doubling the letter.
I’ve seen that in a few contexts (page=p, pages=pp; species(singular)=sp, species(plural)=spp; verse=v, verses=vv, and so on) - so this explanation makes sense.
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### Author:  [@Public\_Animal\_No.9](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Public_Animal_No.9)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2007, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mm-in-a-million-dollars/427771/10 "2007-11-27T00:00:58Z")
[QUOTE=Una Persson]
Unfortunately, “MM” is often used to mean “thousand thousand” (that is, 1,000,000). This appears in units of energy and in gas measurements, which often makes me very unhappy as a large number of people use the measurements inconsistently, sometimes inconsistently within the very same contract or specification. In which case Financial and Engineering hilarity does _not_ ensue; typically Legal un-hilarity does instead.
[/QUOTE]
It does get confusing if you aren’t aware of the convention. The use of “mmBtu” to refer to million Btu is very common in engineering, but MBtu is not usually used (although I’ve seen it a time or two). Natural gas is usually measured in “mcf”, meaning 1000 cubic feet - I don’t recall ever seeing kcf used instead. It’s definitely not an application of the Roman numeral convention, where MM would be 2000. You pretty much just have to think of it as a part of the unit of measurement rather than a normal prefix as used in the SI measurement system.
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### Author:  [@Cunctator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cunctator)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2007, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mm-in-a-million-dollars/427771/11 "2007-11-27T00:04:43Z")
[QUOTE=Paul in Saudi]
I have never seen this usage ever. Not once.
[/QUOTE]
Nor have I.
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### Author:  [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2007, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mm-in-a-million-dollars/427771/12 "2007-11-27T03:23:05Z")
[QUOTE=Jonathan Chance]
Me, I’m still bugged by the use of ‘K’ as ‘thousand’. It should mean 1024, dammit!
[/QUOTE]
Some local guy a few years ago wrote an irate letter to the newspaper, complaining about car dealership ads listing prices like $24k. He ranted on about how it should be an “M”. Clearly the guy had never heard of the metric system.
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### Author:  [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2007, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mm-in-a-million-dollars/427771/13 "2007-11-27T03:27:02Z")
[QUOTE=Phase42]
Some local guy a few years ago wrote an irate letter to the newspaper, complaining about car dealership ads listing prices like $24k. He ranted on about how it should be an “M”. Clearly the guy had never heard of the metric system.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, if I’m paying 24 million for a car, it had better have some good options!
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### Author:  [@whatami](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whatami)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2007, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mm-in-a-million-dollars/427771/14 "2007-11-27T03:52:28Z")
For everybody that hasn’t seen it.
We use in in banking (at least the two banks I’ve worked for) lately. I guess it’s really been more prevalent in the last few years. We wouldn’t ever abbreviate on legal documents, but for internal stuff we often use MM for million. As an example, we may have a Credit Approval that will show
(numbers pulled out of my ass).
> [@Credit Approval](#):
>
> Annual sales of $24MM and debt service of $2MM support the approval of the subject $1MM line of credit.
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### Author:  [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2007, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mm-in-a-million-dollars/427771/15 "2007-11-27T06:00:50Z")
**Paul in Saudi** nailed it in one. It’s not “MM” meanign 2000, but meaning “million, plural.”
Other examples would be the EE.UU.A. he mentioned (notice where the . go) or PP. Capuchinos in the door of the Capuchin convent that doubles up as my parish; PP stands for “padre, plural” (“priest, plural”).
In theory it should be 1M (since 1 is by definition not plural) but MM for when it’s plural.
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### Author:  [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2007, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mm-in-a-million-dollars/427771/16 "2007-11-27T19:45:20Z")
[QUOTE=Public Animal No. 9]
It does get confusing if you aren’t aware of the convention.
[/QUOTE]
I am aware of the convention. I’ve been working in the power industry for just more than 15 years now. What I said was “This appears in units of energy and in gas measurements, which often makes me very unhappy **as a large number of people use the measurements inconsistently, sometimes inconsistently within the very same contract or specification.** ”
> [@](#):
>
> The use of “mmBtu” to refer to million Btu is very common in engineering, but MBtu is not usually used (although I’ve seen it a time or two).
MBtu is used almost all the time in the power industry, although MMBtu is a close second. I also see mBtu, mmBtu, etc.
> [@](#):
>
> Natural gas is usually measured in “mcf”, meaning 1000 cubic feet - I don’t recall ever seeing kcf used instead.
I also see “MCF”, “Mcf”, “MMCF”, “Mmcf”…oh hell, just think of any possible permutation you can.
Here’s a proposal that I have in front of me right now (true, I kept it aside because I was going to use it as an object lesson in one of my classes to show my students why things are so fucked up:
[QUOTE=Fucked Up Proposal from Fortune 100 Company]
…to a boiler heat input of 4800 MBtu/hr or greater. … SO2 emissions limits are 0.12 lbm/MMBtu…
[/QUOTE]
In both cases, they mean “million”. Why does one case have 1 M and the other 2? later on, page 9, we see:
[QUOTE=Fucked Up Proposal from Fortune 100 Company]
NOx: 0.1 lbm/MBtu.
SO2: 0.12 lbm/MBtu
Particulate mass emissions: 0.08 lbm/MMBtu
[/QUOTE]
Later on we see:
[QUOTE=Fucked Up Proposal from Fortune 100 Company]
…sized for a coal burn rate of at least 5000 MMBtu per hour…
[/QUOTE]
That’s madness. But at least it’s better than when I get hired to review Indian or Chinese power plant proposals that have been “translated” (shudder).
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### Author:  [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2007, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mm-in-a-million-dollars/427771/17 "2007-11-27T22:25:48Z")
[QUOTE=Nava]
**Paul in Saudi** nailed it in one. It’s not “MM” meanign 2000, but meaning “million, plural.”
Other examples would be the EE.UU.A. he mentioned (notice where the . go) or PP. Capuchinos in the door of the Capuchin convent that doubles up as my parish; PP stands for “padre, plural” (“priest, plural”).
In theory it should be 1M (since 1 is by definition not plural) but MM for when it’s plural.
[/QUOTE]
There seems to be some conflicting logic in this, mind if I ask for cites? First you imply that MM implies plurality just because there’s more than one M. Contrast to PP, which is plural because the second P stands for “plural?” Applying this logic consistently, the plural of millions should be “MP”. And I would bet that you will never see The Economist print the abbreviation “$1M” for any quantity of anything.
To float my own theory, I always thought the MM was an international convention to prevent confusion for non-readers of English. Most European languages are thus:
1,000 = some variation on “mille” in all the Romance languages
1,000,000 = some variation on “million” in most European languages
1,000,000,000 = some variation on “milliard” (thousand thousands)
1,000,000,000,000 = billion
That’s 3 orders of magnitude that all start with M. Quite confusing!
Since most European languages call a thousand millions as such, but English does not, then MM is used to avoid confusion for non-native readers of English. It wouldn’t be necessary to abbreviate thousands because this is unambiguous (and common to Germanic languages). As for English billions I’m not sure but I bet they’re just denominated as thousands of MM, eliminating the need for a special abbreviation.
I think I’m onto something according to this [cite](http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/pubstyle/measure.htm) (American, oddly enough):
> [@](#):
>
> Note: For the following terms, the same form is used for singular and plural. Also, for various measures of thousand or million units of a commodity, EIA has adopted the policy to use “M” for thousand and “MM” for million.
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### Author:  [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2007, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mm-in-a-million-dollars/427771/18 "2007-11-27T22:37:53Z")
It appears I long-windedly rambled through an explanation of the short and long scales for large orders of magnitude (wiki article [here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales#Long_scale_countries) )
The article does not explicitly mention the MM abbreviation, but does state that UK English does have remnants of the “miliard” as the billion, and took to the habit of writing “thousand million” to disambiguate. It seems obvious MM is a representation of this, since it is most prevalent in UK English. Doubtless it is also much appreciated in non-English-speaking Europe, since they are not only long-scale but widely use “M” as the first letter of thousand, million, and billion. I would bet this is why it persists.
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### Author:  [@NajaNivea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NajaNivea)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2007, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mm-in-a-million-dollars/427771/19 "2007-11-27T22:43:28Z")
[QUOTE=Cosmic Relief]
There seems to be some conflicting logic in this, mind if I ask for cites? First you imply that MM implies plurality just because there’s more than one M. Contrast to PP, which is plural because the second P stands for “plural?” Applying this logic consistently, the plural of millions should be “MP”.
[/QUOTE]
No, I think you misunderstood. I read **Nava** ’s comment as simply echoing this:
> [@Paul in Saudi](#):
>
> But if forced to guess, in Latin (and its daughters) the plural abbreviation is made by doubling the letter. So “EU” would be 'United State" while “EEUU” would be “United States.”
If I’m reading correctly, the second P in PP doesn’t specifically stand for the world “plural”–simply that the doubling of the P’s indicates that there’s multiple padres in casa, like the doubling of the M indicates there are multiple millions (unfortunately not in my checking account).
See:
> [@Nava](#):
>
> It’s not “MM” meanign 2000, but meaning “million, plural.”
> PP stands for “padre, plural” (“priest, plural”).
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### Author:  [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2007, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mm-in-a-million-dollars/427771/20 "2007-11-27T23:54:19Z")
[QUOTE=NajaNivea]
No, I think you misunderstood. I read **Nava** ’s comment as simply echoing this:
If I’m reading correctly, the second P in PP doesn’t specifically stand for the world “plural”–simply that the doubling of the P’s indicates that there’s multiple padres in casa, like the doubling of the M indicates there are multiple millions (unfortunately not in my checking account).
See:
[/QUOTE]
I’ve seen MM for million in quite a few places, where M=thousand and MM=million.
I’ve never seen a document use M for million (singular) and MM for millions (plural).
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