RE: how much is a billion

["Jane Carnall" <jane -dot- carnall -at- digitalbridges -dot- com>]

Hi Amanda,

-----Original Message-----
Is it true that in some countries, "one billion" means
1,000,000,000,000 - what people in the US call "one trillion"? I heard that
in some places "billion" means "one million times one million," rather than
one thousand times one million.
-----Original Message-----

The original progression of numbers in most European countries was from a
thousand times a thousand = one million, to a million times a million = one
billion. In the UK (around 30 years ago) one billion was officially changed
to correspond with the US billion. However, yes, enough countries still use
"billion" to mean a "million million" that if it is at all important, you
should use figures as well as words.

There's a UK numbers style guide that reflects this ambiguity:

http://www.editors.co.uk/html/body_numbers.htm

HTH,

Jane Carnall
Technical Writer and Compendium
of Arcane and Useless Information


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