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Kilobucks
3

Kilobucks

Kilobucks

(OP)
When providing budget estimates, it is common in our company (and many others) to use "kilobucks" and "megabucks," where 1 kilobuck = $1,000 and 1 megabuck = $1,000,000.

I use a lower case "k" for kilo, since the SI abreviation for kilo is "k," and an uppercase "m" for mega, since the SI abbreviation for mega is "M."

As an example, $350,000 would be abbreviated as $350k, while $1,300,000 would be abbreviated as $1.3M.

Lately, I have noticed that many people use an uppercase "K" to abbreviate kilo.

Which is correct?

RE: Kilobucks

k is correct; K is all together too common.

RE: Kilobucks

I concur with David. k is correct.  However, I worked for an american tyre company and frequently I saw m as an abbreviation for 1000.  Presumably this was from 0.001"?

RE: Kilobucks

or maybe from roman numerials ? (M=1000)

RE: Kilobucks

From an American's perspective:

I always use and see a capital M (as in $M) for millions of dollars,

For thousands, I don't notice a single convention, possible because lower case and upper case "Ks" are not that different in many computer fonts, possible becasue there is little risk of confusion, and possible I'm just as careless as the next guy in this area.

As to which is correct:  I know lower case "m" is for "milli" (as in mm = millimeter), and lower case "k" is for "kilo" (as in km = kilometer), and upper case "M" is for "mega" (as in MPa = MegaPascal).  

Now, being an American,  also use the abreviation "mil", for 1/1000 of an inch = 1 mil,  but I've never used a lowercase "m" for this abbreviation.

RE: Kilobucks

As far as I am aware, K (capitalised) is not a recognised prefix in the SI system.  I could be wrong of course.  So use of it is just bad rather than wrong or misleading.

RE: Kilobucks

Capital K is not a prefix in SI, it is a base unit: the kelvin.

RE: Kilobucks

k is correct.  K is not.

Those routinely using K should be suitably chastized and their ignorance made known around the firm!

And why do you need a thousand stags anyway?

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

RE: Kilobucks

I've seen in the past that M was for $1,000 and MM was for $1,000,000.  It was standard practice at the company I worked for at the time, which was mainly based on German (since previous owners were in Deutschland).

Here, at the new place, there are no conventions so it is free will.

RE: Kilobucks

In the U.S., M, as in Roman numeral M, was the convention for 1000 for many many decades, back before the SI-style prefixes for bits and bytes (the most common SI prefix context for Joe average slightly technical American) made k the more common convention for 1000 and M for 1,000,000.  I had to make myself stop using M for 1000 for this reason.

However, using the SI prefixes "M" and "k" as suffixes for dollar figures is an informal practice at best, so arguing over whether the "k" should be capitalized or not is a rather misplaced argument.

"Megabucks" is definitely slang.  I haven't heard "kilobucks" yet.

Hg

Eng-Tips policies:  FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies

RE: Kilobucks

I am fastidious about using k instead of K because it is a pet peave of mine, but I prefer to lead by example rather than browbeat the "K-ers". Interestingly though, we have a recent intern who just hired on, so she is only 2 years out of college. She actually noticed my always using the lower case k when I describe kWh or kW and asked about it, then went on to say that she always used K in college and was never corrected. Maybe that's where the problem lies.

RE: Kilobucks

The answer would be obvious if we were talking about engineering units.  It is not obvious to me that S.I. conventions apply to money.   After all, we don't say 445 k$, we say $445k !

I susepct we are just talking about informal notation, not notation according to some standard.  If so, who's to say that one person's informal notation is right while another's is wrong?

By the way, I use k.

=====================================
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RE: Kilobucks

Quote:

After all, we don't say 445 k$, we say $445k !
Hmmm.  No-one really says either of those (but we might write them).  Must be late.

=====================================
Eng-tips forums: The best place on the web for engineering discussions.

RE: Kilobucks

Let me add another bit of monetary esoterica.

In boating, the unit of measurement here in the states is the "boat unit".  A boat unit (BU) is equivalent to $100, as in "That new radar display cost me twelve BU's...

old field guy

RE: Kilobucks

Which states are those? Never heard of that definition. Are you sure it's not $1000? BOAT stands for Break Out Another Thousand.

RE: Kilobucks

I usually try to just say $1,000.00 or $1,000,000.00. That way, less chance for misunderstanding.

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."   
Albert Einstein
Have you read FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

RE: Kilobucks

Unless you're talking to a mainland european.

They use , instead of . for decimal points.

Both numbers you put Asherang are $1 followed by lots of unnecessary zeroswinky smile.

I thought for this reason that convention was no longer to use , to break up 1000s etc but I see it a lot here in the States.

As to esoteric monetry units:

In the UK, pound coins were refered to as golden beer tokens back in my uni days.

Last I heard the horse racing 'industry' still used guineas

http://home.clara.net/brianp/money.html

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

RE: Kilobucks

Agreed.

Still, $1,000.00 is clearer than $1K or $1k or $1m or $1M.

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."   
Albert Einstein
Have you read FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

RE: Kilobucks

I commonly see $1k and $1M representing one thousand and one million, however, I have never heard anyone say "dollars one k" or "dollars one em".  For the former, they would usually say either "one k", "one thousand" or "one thousand dollars." Often it seems clear from context that it is money, do the dollars get dropped.  For the lader, I have never heard megabucks, but "one mil" is somewhat common.

Writing out $1,000,000.00 seems less clear than $1 million because it would be easy to read it as $1 billion.  You have to count up all the pesky zeros as you are reading, instead of having the correct word already on the paper.

RE: Kilobucks

bacon4life. good point when a British billion isn't (or didn't used to be) as US Billion

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

RE: Kilobucks

What throws me off is when M gets used for 1000, for instance:

MBH = 1000 Btu/hr

or,

kW would be kilowatts, but what if it is the first word in a sentence..

Of course my industry is pretty much a hodgepodge of odd numbers (a ton of cooling is 12,000 btu/hr, when you describe a chiller as being a 350 tons it tends to make structural engineers sweat).

RE: Kilobucks

$1,000,000.00 = 10 Wilson's = 100 Salmon Chase's = 200 Madison's =  100 Cleavland's = 100 Large = 1000 Grand = (And I typically abbreviate) $1MM.

Wes C.
------------------------------
No trees were killed in the sending of this message, but a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

RE: Kilobucks

The only reason the suffix "kW" would be used at the beginning of the sentence is if you were discussing the use of the term, and then it's easy enough to rearrange the sentence so that it doesn't come at the beginning, like so:

"The suffix 'kW' has no business being at the beginning of a sentence."

Hg

Eng-Tips policies:  FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies

RE: Kilobucks

kW is a unit of measure for power.  

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

RE: Kilobucks

All those little unit of measure suffixes are still suffixes.  If there's no number, there's no suffix.

Hg

Eng-Tips policies:  FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies

RE: Kilobucks

So is dollar $ SI or Emperial? I am confused.

-:)

RE: Kilobucks

Better yet, since when "bucks" is accepted standard for dollars? No one seem to fraught on that, but k or K is more bothersome.

Cheers!!

RE: Kilobucks

What about capacitor ratings in farads?

m = micro
M = milli

RE: Kilobucks

What about the traditional (?) English units of money:

tenner, score, pony, monkey

RE: Kilobucks

Why not $1X10^6 ?

you save zeros and there is no confution if its $1m (0.001) $1M (1000000) or $1m (million)

Although all the non-engineering types might not know how to multiply...

RE: Kilobucks

While the non-engineering types laugh that i can't spell confusion

RE: Kilobucks

In computing k=1000, K=1024.  In the old days when machines boasted how many kilobytes they had, 65535 would be advertised

1) correctly as 65kb
2) incorrectly as 65Kb
3) correctly as 64Kb

There is also lot of confusion on Megabytes and Gigabytes.

1Mb=1024x1024 but $1M = 1000x1000x$1
1Gb=1024x1024x1024 but $1G (short billion) = 1000x1000x1000x$1

Some computer manufacturers (especially disk drive distributors) still advertise 1G as 1 billion instead of 1024^3.  They always advertise unformatted capacity which is pretty useless to anyone because almost everyone only uses the formatted capacity.

So an 80Gb drive unformatted can be 75Gb formatted.  If they had taken the billion interpretation instead of 1024^3 then the 80Gb disk would actually be 75Gb and the formatted capacity would probably be 70Gb.

RE: Kilobucks

b and B can each refer to either bits or bytes which further confuses matters. One convention is to use b for bits and B for bytes. So what xwb regards as correct in one convention becomes incorrect in another.

Some computer manufacturers (especially disk drive distributors) still advertise 1G as 1 billion instead of 1024^3.
Giga, as a prefix to mean 10^9 rather than 2^30, is technically correct.

Also, the term megabyte for example may mean a 1000*1000 bytes, 1024*1024 bytes, or even 1000*1024 bytes depending not only on who is using the term, but when and in what context. I will refer to "1.44 megabyte floppies" as this is common terminology even if the so called megabyte in this context is thousands of pairs of 512 byte disc sectors.

On the subject of floppy capacities, Wikipedia says ....
However neither 1.47 megabytes nor 1.41 mebibytes is generally used. The number most frequently printed on such floppies is "1.44 MB" which incorrectly combines Base 2 (1440 kibibytes of storage space) with Base 10 terminology to yield 1.44 "kilo-kibibytes" (1.44 * 1000 * 1024 bytes, where kilo=1000 and kibi=1024). Since "kilo-kibibytes" is not an SI standard unit, the label is incorrect and confusing for users. As example, a person using floppies to back-up his hard drive, and expecting 1.44 MB to mean 1.44 million bytes, would miscalculate the number of floppies needed for the project.


Quote (xwb):

If they had taken the billion interpretation instead of 1024^3 then the 80Gb disk would actually be 75Gb ...
I think this is supposed to mean ....
If they had taken the 1024^3 interpretation instead of 1000^3 then the 80Gb disk would be 75Gb ...

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