Long scale Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description

Long scale is the English translation of the French term échelle longue, which designates a system of numeric names in which the word billion means a million millions.

Short scale is the English translation of the French term échelle courte, which designates a system of numeric names in which the word billion means only a thousand millions.

Both systems have been used in France at various times in history.

For most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Great Britain uniformly used the long scale, while the United States of America used the short scale, so the two systems were often (and accurately) referred to as "British" and "American" usage, respectively. However, by the end of the 20th century most English-speaking countries had almost universally adopted the short scale, so the phrases "British usage" and "American usage" are now confusing.

"Long scale" and "short scale" are not familiar terms in English, but once explained they are easily understood and unambiguous. Therefore some Wikipedia articles that discuss numeric nomenclature, such as Billion and Names of large numbers, use the phrases "long scale" and "short scale" to refer to the two systems.

Table of contents

1 Comparison 2 History 3 Current usage 3.1 UK usage advice 4 Alternative approaches

Comparison

Value	Long Scale	Short Scale
103	thousand	thousand
106	million	million
109	thousand million or milliard	billion
1012	billion	trillion
1015	thousand billion or billiard	quadrillion
1018	trillion	quintillion

For a more extensive table, see names of large numbers.

History

• 1475: Jehan Adam records the words "bymillion" and "trimillion" (for 10¹² and 10¹⁸)
• 1484: French mathematician Nicolas Chuquet, in his article "Triparty en la science de nombres"[1], uses the words byllion, tryllion, quadrillion, quyllion, sixlion, septyllion, ottyllion, and nonyllion to refer to 10¹², 10¹⁸, etc.; Chuquet's work has little direct influence because it is not published until the 1870s, but most of it is copied (without attribution) by Estienne de la Roche for a portion of his 1520 book, Larismetique
• ca. 1550: Pelletier retains Chuquet's long scale but suggests the name milliard in place of "thousand million". This word is widely adopted in England, Germany, and the rest of Europe.
• Early 17th century: In France and Italy, a minority of scientists change the sense of "billion" to 10⁹
• Middle 18th Century: The reformed meaning of the term "billion" is brought to the New-England colonies
• Early 19th century: France partially converts to the short scale, and is followed by the USA, which begins teaching it in schools.
• 1926: H. W. Fowler's Modern English Usage notes "It should be remembered that this word ["billion"] does not mean in American use (which follows the French) what it means in British. For to us it means the second power of a million, i.e. a million millions (1,000,000,000,000); for Americans it means a thousand multiplied by itself twice, or a thousand millions (1,000,000,000), what we call a milliard. Since billion in our sense is useless except to astronomers, it is a pity that we do not conform."
• 1948: France's International Conférence des Poids et des Mesures proposes to return to the long scale.
• 1961: The Journal Officiel (the French official gazette) confirms the system of long scale (Décret 61-501, page 14, note 3A).
• 1974: British prime minister Harold Wilson abandons the long scale meaning of billion (10¹²), explaining before the House of Commons that "billion" from now on in British government statistics has the short scale meaning of 10⁹, in common with the U.S.
• 1994: The Italian government officially confirms the long scale use of the term "billion" (Direttiva CE 1994 n. 55, page 12).
• End of 20th century: As a result of US influence, the short scale usage comes to be used officially by all English-speaking countries.

Current usage

The following countries use the short scale:

• All English-speaking countries — the U.S, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, etc.
• Brazil, which despite speaking a variant of Portuguese, uses 10⁹ = bilhão, 10¹² = trilhão, etc.
• Puerto Rico, a Spanish-speaking US territory (examples please)
• Russia and Turkey, where 10⁹ is commonly called "milliard" but the short scale is used for 10¹² and above .
• Greece, which uses 10⁹ = disekatommyrio ("two hundred myriad"), 10¹² = trisekatommyrio, ("three hundred myriad"), etc

All other countries use the long scale. Examples:

French and Norwegian milliard, Dutch miljard, German Milliarde, Spanish millardo, Italian miliardo, Polish miliard, Swedish miljard or milliard and Czech miliarda all equal 10⁹.

Dutch biljoen, German Billion, Spanish billón, Italian bilione and Swedish billion or biljon all equal 10¹².

UK usage advice

The term "milliard" is now obsolete in British English, and "billion" has meant nothing except 10⁹ in all published writing for many years now. Both the UK government and the BBC use the short scale exclusively in all contexts. Anyone deliberately using billion to mean 10¹² in British English is likely to be misunderstood.

However, the long scale understanding still persists among older people. More importantly, the majority of people have no direct experience with manipulating numbers this large, so a significant proportion of lay readers will interpret "billion" as 10¹², even if they are young enough to have been taught otherwise at school. For this reason, avoiding the word may be advisable when writing for the general public.

Alternative approaches

Some dictionaries recommend that the terms billion, trillion, quadrillion, etc should be avoided because of their ambiguity. Alternative ways of identifying large numbers include:

• use combinations of the unambiguous word 'million' wherever possible, for example: 10⁹ = 1 thousand million; 10¹² = 1 million million. This becomes rather unwieldy for numbers above 10¹².

• use scientific notation, for example 10⁹, 10¹². This is the most common practice among scientists and mathematicians who actually use such large numbers for practical purposes.

• use the SI prefixes, for example, Giga for 10⁹ and Tera for 10¹². One problem is that in computing contexts the prefix may be interpreted as the binary prefix with the same name but a somewhat different value.

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