We're having a discussion about using M vs. K to indicate thousand. Does anyone know the origin and the proper usage?

Thanks

Well, in the old school, M was always used. (Roman numeral for 1000.) Somewhere down the line, it changed to K (for kilo) around the early '90's. Now the M is usually used to designate "million." I don't think it matters much which you use, I'd just be sure everyone is doing things consistently throughout your organization.

"M" is the Roman numeral designating 1,000 and can be used as readily as any other Roman numerals.

M is the Roman numeral for 1000. I think the "K" signifies 1000 in the metric system. Maybe herein lies the confusion.
OK, brighter bulbs, please step forward...

Since there can be reasonable differences of interpretation about the meaning of these symbols, you should either avoid them or provide a footnote such as " 'K' represents 1,000."

I read an article that differentiated when you should use M and when you should use K. There were very specific reasons that made total sense to me (at the time) but now I can't remember what they are

"K"
An informal abbreviation for one thousand used in expressions where the unit is understood, such as "10K run" (10 kilometers) or "700K disk" (700 kilobytes or kibibytes).

"M" [1]
Informal abbreviation for million in expressions where the base unit is understood, as in "500M hard drive" (500 megabytes or mebibytes).

M [2]
The Roman numeral 1000, sometimes used in symbols to indicate a thousand, as in Mcf, a traditional symbol for 1000 cubic feet. Given the widespread use of M to mean one million, this older use of M to mean 1000 is very confusing and should be scrapped.

Thanks everyone.

K as used in your example is commonly used regarding denominations as an abbreviation for kilo which represents the 1,000 multiple of a unit. Therefore it would not be incorrect to abbreviate $2,000 by using 2k which means 2 x 1,000.

M is the roman numeral for 1,000. Roman numerals do not go beyond 1,000. To extrapolate to millions, a bar is commonly placed over the M indicating multiply by 1,000. Therefore, 2M could be used to represent 2,000 or 2M with a bar over the M could be used to represent 2 million.

Either one can be used to represent 1,000, just stay consistent.

The standard at BofA was M for 1,000 and MM for 1,000,000. (where I was trained as a lender) I've seen this at three financial institutions in the commercial and small business loan areas as well as private banking.

K's are typically used by newer lenders (in my experience) in branch banking, but most commercial staff still use M or MM. I can't say I've seen anyone use M for million in my experience, but now that you've mentioned it, I'll probably have some chowder head break the mold and use it here to confuse my reviews of the files

I've always used M or MM which was taught to me in commercial lending school about 1MM years ago.

I agree Dawn. The standard in most banking circles is M and MM particularly in commercial lending. However, most newspapers use K. I hope they understand the M and MM if they are getting info in that format from a bank and writing a story!

I don't think there is a "defined" difference of when to use which term, only as T has implied, "where the base unit is understood". I have seen MM used to abbreviate millions which is based on Roman numerals using an algebra computation, such as $2,000,000 is $2MM (2 x 1000 x 1000). Getting technical, proper representation using roman numerals would be simply MM with a bar over it. But in the financial industry it is commonly understood that M represent 1,000 and MM represents 1,000,000.

However, in other industries such as the "tech world" M is commonly used and understood to represent 1,000,000. M in the metric system stands for Mega (1,000,000). So 1M, based on the metric system w/b $1,000,000.

So, both K and M can be proper. Usage depends on whether you are thinking "roman numeral" or "metric". The key as previously posted is to be consistent and provide a footnote as to the base unit. If you use K for 1000, then M s/b 1,000,000. If you use M for 1,000 then MM could represent 1,000,000, but properly M with a bar over it.

I always thought that "M" and "K" were interchangeable for 1,000 (for reasons stated above) and blamed the lazy press for making "M" mean Million when they wrote headlines.

(And "K" in computer terms is more accurately 1,024, if you were interested.)

M - thousand
MM - million

or

K - thousand
M - million
B - billion

Take yer pick...

Actually, 1 billion using the metric system would be "G". I use it all the time balancing my savings account! But B works for me too, 'cause you may need G for Gazillion Trillion!

And that brings up another 1,000 abbreviation - "Hey Lefty, boss says a thousand g's if you snuff him out tonight"

This was a great thread! I have had problems with inexperienced Note Department associates reading the abbreviations wrong (not their fault as our officers are not consistent in the usage) resulting in the wrong CRA revenue code being applied. We discovered this during an integrity check a few years ago and it resulted in a whole bunch of work. Be careful!

I once coined the word "trimagna" to explain the tendency of policitians and economists to put money on a logarithmic scale, something like the Richter scale.

Their counting sequence goes "million, billion, trillion", emphasizing every third order of magnitude.