Pablo Saratxaga wrote:
On Wed, Oct 06, 2004 at 10:13:41AM -0400, Delirium
wrote:
"Thousand million" sounds a bit odd
though. If I saw "thousand
million", I would expect to see a footnote explaining why this odd
choice of wording was used instead of "billion",
Because a billion is not a thousand million but a thousand thousand
million maybe :-)
[Sigh] That's what this whole discussion has been about. Which one your
particular view on linguistic history prefers is irrelevant (I could
make all sorts of arguments about why the English language is illogical
in thousands of instances); the point is that in US English "billion"
means "a thousand million" unambiguously, whereas in some other dialects
of English it doesn't.
In US English, a billion is simply a thousand million. Furthermore,
it's the only of writing a thousand million that doesn't sound odd. "A
thousand million" is the only other correct way ("a milliard" is not US
English), and it sounds odd in US English. Thus there should be some
explanation of what's going on for the confused reader who is not aware
of these differences, such as a hyperlink on [[thousand million]].
-Mark