# Talk:Long and short scales

Why did the short scale start to exist in the first place? 2001:2044:126E:E000:74FE:6A38:D431:9B0C (talk) 13:50, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Educated guess: To better match with the prefixes of the names. The "bi" in billion sounds like two and the "tri" in trillion sounds like three. So, it makes sense to think of million, billion, trillion as sequential (1, 2, 3). The long scale has the weird -iard guys in there to mess up the sequence. The long scale could make sense if -iard was commonly understood to mean super-sized or something, but it is not a common suffix. Big Maciard. Stevebroshar (talk) 14:29, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
??? Better match has long scale: bi=two => bi-million = two times million = million x million = 10e12 31.30.176.189 (talk) 15:28, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
Your question begs the question: what motivated the definition/use of the long scale? I'd love to know the answer for both scales. Stevebroshar (talk) 14:37, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

I have already removed some columns from tables that were overly complicated and contained noise (off topic info). 
The history section table is over-tablefication. I plan to de-tablefy it.
IMO the usage section is overly complicated; too clever. It should be restructured to be easier to consume. Stevebroshar (talk) 15:30, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

The tables, charts, and graphs need to be restored. They provide an easy understanding as they list the number of "0"s per number. Many people are not familiar with the "10/\16" format.
Kenixkil (talk) 07:25, 1 January 2025 (UTC)
@Kenixkil In the number "10¹⁶", the number of zeroes is literally in plain sight. There are 16 zeroes because the exponent is ¹⁶. I don't see how "10000000000000000" is better in any way. FaviFake (talk) 21:56, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

In Spanish it's happening the same that happened in the UK: increased popular use of the short scale is leading the way to its adoption. 86.31.178.164 (talk) 12:54, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

"[...] Use of the short scale is found in most English-speaking and Arabic-speaking speaking countries, most Eurasian post-communist countries, and Brazil."
To the best of my knowledge, no Continental European or Eurasian country uses the short scale. Rotakiwi (talk) 09:10, 11 October 2025 (UTC)