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I am trying to describe the desired formatting for numbers in a given document. For rounded monetary quantities over a million this would be dollar sign, arabic numeral, unit (e.g. 3,000,000 dollars would be written as $3 million).

Is there a term that describes this format?

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Speaking as a computer programmer, we tend to call $3,000,000.00 "accounting format."

In this case, however ($3 million), we tend to just call it "million format"

As in, "could you put these account totals in million format?"

Same goes for billion and trillion, but nothing less than a million.

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I do not think there is a term that describes the format you describe. However, I would describe it as a hybrid/combination of words and numerals. There are probably scores of web sites and style guides that suggest how best to combine words, numerals, and symbols for various currencies (British pounds, Euros, dollars, yen, shekels, etc.).

See, for example, http://www.mtdesk.com/Money+values+expressed+as+numbers, or http://www.grammarbook.com/numbers/numbers.asp.

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  • Those sites are great, and have been invaluable in this process, I just couldn't find a decent word to use before giving examples and when referring back to it. Thanks for the resources. Jul 17, 2013 at 18:08

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