How To Abbreviate Million, Billion and Thousands on a Resume

Before sending out your resume, upload it to the tool below to ensure your sections, abbreviations, and bullet points are correctly identified. It’ll also identify any mistakes and give you suggestions for improvements. You can also use “M.” This has historically been used to mean thousand, but is rarely used that way anymore, so it’s unlikely to cause confusion. If you say “10M” on a resume, recruiters will know that you mean million, not thousand.

Using uppercase (“MM”) or lowercase (“mm”) are both fine, as long as you’re consistent. Uppercase abbreviations are standard in the United States, while lowercase abbreviations are more common in some countries overseas, so keep that in mind when choosing which to use. So, “10,000,000” could become “10MM” or “10M.” “10 million” is also acceptable, but don’t use “10mill,” which is overly informal — stick to the more common abbreviations. Both upper and lowercase M would be the correct abbreviation. Because the capital letter M is the Roman numeral for a thousand, you may want to use the lowercase letter to avoid confusion.

How to abbreviate million on a resume?

Typically, the abbreviation is used right after a number without a space. I’ve worked in and around global finance for over many years and have served on formal audit committees for both private and public companies in the US, Europe, Asia and Australia. During that time I’ve seen financial statements from maybe 1000+ different companies and individuals. When business people read reports and recruiters read resumes, it’s common to see this — $1M. Abbreviating a million is common, especially in the financial context. Accountants and other businesspeople will use m instead of writing all six zeros.

An abbreviation for million is most often seen in financial documents and paperwork. Swap the word “million” for “mil” or “mm” to avoid redundant language but to still be specific in how large numbers you’re working with. Other numbers, such as “thousand,” have more interesting abbreviations, such as “k.” The three letters “mil” are very clearly defined as mbeaning million, so you shouldn’t run into any issues. In finance and accounting, MM (or lowercase “mm”) denotes that the units of figures presented are in millions.

Some examples of million abbreviations used by the press:

The only other option is to write your entire number numerically or even convert it to scientific notation. Designed strategy for large-scale operational transformation initiative encompassing 1700+ full-time employees (FTEs), resulting in 500 FTE savings. Designed strategy for large-scale operational transformation initiative encompassing 1.7K+ full-time employees (FTEs), resulting in 500 FTE savings. I always used MM to denote millions but see it written occasionally as $12M. While recruiters love to see numbers on resumes, they also like them to be accurate (more here) and make sense. 1 million watts abbreviates to 1MW or “megawatt” and in geology, one million years ago is often abbreviated to “1 mya”.

• In the English language, “a million” can be a metaphor for a very large number.
• If you use $1M, some of your readers might think sales grew $1,000 instead of $1 million.
• However, millions range from 1,000,000 to 999,999,999 so there can be a maximum of eight zeros if you are referencing a 100 million (100,000,000).
• I’ve worked in and around global finance for over many years and have served on formal audit committees for both private and public companies in the US, Europe, Asia and Australia.

Only use abbreviations on your resume when they are common and easily understood. Abbreviating “million” as “M” is fine, because recruiters can easily understand what you’re trying to say. Abbreviating “hundred” as “H” would be strange, because it’s not an abbreviation you’re likely to find anywhere else. The word “million” is not a commonly abbreviated word, but its abbreviations still have their place.

How Many Zeros in a Million?

Some abbreviations for million options may surprise you, as is also true for some of the other large number abbreviations. One thing to consider is that when writing about large amounts of money, the words “million” or “billion” are often left out altogether, as are superfluous zeroes. It’s then up to the reader to note the context, with the document stating the place value once at the beginning and not again.

Just like a billion it can be used to express an exaggerated statement, meant to create a strong impression. In the English language, “a million” can be a metaphor for a very large number. In this case, “79 Ma” means only a quantity of 79 million years, without the meaning of “79 million years ago”. Myr is deprecated in geology, but in astronomy Myr is standard. Where “myr” is seen in geology it is usually “Myr” (a unit of mega-years).

List & Abbreviations for Months: List of Months and Abbreviations

Similarly, the best way to abbreviate billions on a resume is “B.” You can spell out “billion,” but don’t use “BB” — the double letter is only used in millions to avoid confusion. The best (and most common) way to abbreviate millions on a resume is “MM.” It’s clear and easy to understand, which is the key to successfully abbreviating numbers. Donna Svei, an executive resume writer and former C-level executive, retained search consultant, and CPA, authors all of AvidCareerist’s posts. Again, if you’re desperate for space, use $1K for $1,000. If they don’t, they can Google it and get a straight answer (I checked).

Review a few examples of sentences that feature common abbreviations for billion. Review a few examples of sentences that feature common abbreviations for million. When plural, as in “millions,” it refers to multiples of 1,000,000. In its simplest terms, a million is “one thousand thousand”. The word “million” is most often used in reference to money, but is also frequently used in exaggeration. The word “million” can be paired with the suffix “-aire” to form the word millionaire which indicates an individual with a million or more dollars.

You shouldn’t use abbreviations in academic or official writing. Use abbreviations in informal scenarios like notes and unimportant communication where context exists. Myr (million years) is in common use in fields such as Earth science and cosmology. Together they make a reference system, one to a quantity, the other to a particular place in a year numbering system that is time before the present. The use of two m’s to denote millions is becoming less common.

It comes from middle english “milioun”, from middle french “milion” and from early italian “millione”. The meaning of the word “million” is common to the short scale and long scale numbering systems, unlike the larger numbers, which have different names in the two systems. If you’re looking to avoid the word million altogether, you won’t have much luck.

Don’t use two words when one will do — and don’t spell out whole words when common abbreviations are easy to read and save space. In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about how to abbreviate million, billion and thousand on a resume, as well as other common resume abbreviations you should be using. When abbreviation of million preparing financial statements, accountants will typically write a note at the top of the income statement or the balance sheet saying, “All figures are expressed in millions of U.S. dollars,” for example. Financial and accounting statements historically used a different approach to abbreviating thousand and million.

Thus, MM is the same as writing “M multiplied by M,” which is equal to “1,000 times 1,000”, which equals 1,000,000 (one million). This guide will explore how the notation should be used, as well as alternative symbols that are used in practice. Different banks, consultancies, accountants, investors, brokers, and lawyers will use different suffixes. Banks and accounting firms have style guides for suffixes (and these are not always followed). For consultancies, brokerages, law firms, and corporations the use of suffixes can vary a lot from office to office, team to team, and even different individuals on the same team may use different suffixes. Maximizing the impact of your resume is all about using your space wisely.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a consistent approach to labeling units. The least ambiguous approach is to simply write them out in words, such as “$ thousands.” This is CFI’s recommended method, to avoid any potential confusion. In this example, we intentionally chose a piece of analysis that contained various different units, such as dollars and shares. When an analyst must present various different types of units, it is recommended to add a “units” column so that each item contains a label for easy reference. The Latin numeral MM is frequently used to designate that the units used in presenting information (financial and non-financial) are in millions. The example below shows how figures can be portrayed in millions.

This approach combines Roman numerals and abbreviations. It has become less common due to the potential for confusion. If you do use these abbreviations, be sure to clearly define them in the text.