Anglo-American communications studies

[Ray Dillinger]

On Mon, 8 Jan 2001, David Honig wrote:

>At 08:17 AM 1/8/01 -0500, Ken Brown wrote:
>>and there are very few opportunities for real misunderstanding. We know
>
>The meaning of 'billion' differs by three orders of magnitude 
>across the pond.  That's plenty of room for confusion :-) 
>

And in the US, "billiards" is a game played with cues and balls 
on a felt-covered slate table.  In the UK, it's also a very large 
number.  Thankfully, so large that that definition rarely comes 
into conversation.  As I understand cross-pond conversions, it 
goes like this....

USA          UK           Scientific
Thousand     Thousand      1E3
Million      Million       1E6
Billion      Milliard      1E9
Trillion     Billion       1E12
Quadrillion  Billiard      1E15
Quintillion  Trillion      1E18
Sextillion   Trilliard     1E21
Septillion   Quadrillion   1E24
Octillion    Quadrilliard  1E27
etc          etc           etc


This silliness seems regular, and has no good reason not to 
extend indefinitely.  But perversely, both dialects use the 
same word for googols and larger quantities.

This is one reason why I tend to just say "screw it" and go to 
scientific notation when writing.  That way it's clear what I 
mean no matter where the reader is from.

				Bear