why do Americans denote a million by the letters mm and Europeans by the single letter m?

Question

e.g.
In Europe 1 million would be denoted 1m
In America 1 million would be denoted 1mm

Answer 1

presumably because everything is bigger in America....

Answer 2

MM
Abbreviation for 1 million; used after a slash mark to express a price or rate per million units. For example, 500/MM might indicate that 500 responses were received for every million surveys mailed

m
mass or metre or minute or masculine

Answer 3

Well, being pedantic, neither is correct since m = milli (i.e., one thousandth), and mm = millimetre (i.e., one thousandth of a metre). So, following the SI units convention, one million should be represented by upper case M (e.g., 1M = one million).

NB I have never seen million represented by 'm' in Europe/UK.

And how on earth Americans get 'mm' to mean million is beyond me! 'mn' perhaps - though why bother?

Answer 4

I think its basically because America does everything which is not prevalent in Europe or in other words, America does nothing thats prevalent in Europe. In America, electrical switches are upside down. They have their own English.Still America follows 'yards' and 'miles' rather than kilometres. They even spell the distance 'metre' as 'meter'.

Answer 5

They don't!

I have never seen anyone (of any nationality) denote a million by "mm".

Answer 6

i think it's due to the roman numeral M, which equals 1,000. Since a million is a thousand thousand, a short hand using roman numerals would be 1MM.

Answer 7

Coz the americans always have a M illion M ore !! lol

Answer 8

banana