RE: Billion and other internationalization items (was Appendixes vs. Annexes)

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

>Just to nitpick...that's the Guardian's view of style usage, which is not
>necessarily correct (insofar as anything is 'correct',  per se). During the
>1980s the Guardian was so notorious for inaccuracies in its printing that
it
>was nicknamed "the Grauniad".

True. But it's now the only newspaper that publishes its style guide; it was
the first newspaper to have a reader's editor; and it is still the only
mainstream newspaper with a comprehensive policy of publicly acknowledging
and correcting of published errors.

>A quick check of the web
>(http://www.alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxbill00.html) gives one example
>statistic, in that Parliament adopted the US billion in 1974; however, the
>self-same web page also notes that "the US meaning is still rare outside
>journalism and finance, its introduction having served merely to cause
>confusion" (I didn't write this!).

When I was doing science O-Grades and Highers in secondary school, and later
on in computing at university, I was universally and consistently told that
"billion" now meant "a thousand million". (Some of my science teachers at
school were rather tart about this, but none of them disagreed.)

>Apparently, South Africa, Australia and
>New Zealand still stick to the original British usage, too.

Certainly it's always better to be clear which usage you mean!

>My take on it would be that you need to explain which you're using up-front
and then stick to it (the usual tech authoring mantra of 'consistency,
consistency...'), though for the record it seems more logical to me that a
thousand thousand is a million, so
a million million ought to be a billion (hehe). As long as the reader knows
what you mean, it's fine.<

A hundred is 10 10s. A thousand is 10 hundreds. A million is a 1000
thousands. There *is* no overall logic in this: it's just what works. It
seems more logical to me that a billion is a 1000 million because it then
goes up in reasonable increments: 10, 10, 1000, 1000 - instead of 10, 10,
1000, 1000000: it depends what number-pattern you're looking at.

>By the way, I resent that "some *older* people may still be slightly
>confused", on the grounds that I'm 26. :-)

Hey, you can be slightly confused at any age. :-)

Jane Carnall
The writers all stand around a cauldron chanting and occasionally tossing in
a billion small rodents. Unless stated otherwise, these opinions are mine,
and mine alone. Apologies for the long additional sig: it is added
automatically and outwith my control.



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