Thanks Rmhermen I went to the style manual and discovered the following in addition to what you write above In scientific contexts scientific notation is preferred The implication is that the thin space is for science only possibly explains my preference for that style In the examples for larger bit not as big as pinball numbers I found the following The hippopotamus stands 1 5 m 5 ft at the shoulders and weighs between 2 700 and 4 500 kg 425 710 st or 6 000 9 900 lb The hippopotamus stands 1 E0 m 1 5 m 5 ft at the shoulders and weighs between Orders of magnitude mass 2 700 and 4 500 kg 425 710 st or 6 000 9 900 lb Given this information and despite my preference for 10 000 m note thin space used as suggested in the style manual the correct style is 10 000 m My preference is 1500 m although the style manual suggests 1 500 m Thanks for your help on clearing this up I might add that I had to edit the 1984 olympics page since all the results were in ft inches ONLY the 1988 olympics still needs to be edited This is really bizzare since the original distances were measured and published in metric The author must have converted them all to imperial and then cut out the metric version I understand that wikipedia is probably dominated by imperial centric users from the U S but there is no need to remove the metric version when these conversions are made Excuse the rant