Talk:Billion (disambiguation)/Archive 1

message: I found this phrase to be useless:
The original meaning, <U>since the beginnings of modern times</U>, is...
"The original meaning" is more clear in meaning, while "since the beginnings of modern times" is somewhat redundant and a lot more vague. If it was the original meaning, then we could assume that it has been since the "beginnings of modern times," whatever that means. When was "the beginnings of modern times?" A hundred years ago? A thousand years ago? Last week? Where/when/by whom was the word coined? What information am I supposed to obtain from this phrase? Or why not just omit the meaningless phrase altogether?
--68.77.118.13 03:21, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Meaningless Phrase

message: I've never heard these terms used in English. I just did a Google search on billion trillion "short scale" "long scale" and got only two hits, both on Wikipedia mirrors, both referring to this article.
Are these phrases in general use? They're very convenient and very evocative, but have they been used outside this article? Are they real English phrases, or are they translations into English of phrases in general use in some other language? If we're going to use these phrases here, we shouldn't just say the American used is termed the "short scale", we should state clearly who calls it that and where the term arose. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:32, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: This phrase was inserted by user 81.57.112.41 (possibly User: Michael Chuquet before acquiring his login?) on Aug 10 at 14:50. I suspect that it is a translation from French or German. I also like the brevity of the terminology - I find it self-evident - but do not seek to create new phrases. Ian Cairns 08:48, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Presumably they originated somewhere where both usages were common... I wonder whether that would be France, where the terminology was changed from "short scale" to "long scale" about fifty years ago? Dpbsmith (talk) 11:01, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

text: It would appear that the French indeed use the terms échelle longue and échelle courte. I really like the phrases "long scale" and "short scale" but we need to exercise a little care if we are going to use them in Wikipedia, especially in article titles. Dpbsmith (talk) 16:33, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

text: ...and therefore I've created an article entitled long scale, and a redirect from short scale explaining why using these terms is a) an excellent idea, and b) not currently standard English usage. It's very telling that the terms are so self-explanatory and easily understood that just about everybody discussing these articles simply started using them. Dpbsmith (talk) 17:33, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  That looks great. It should enable some simplification in related articles in due course. Ian Cairns 19:59, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: "Short scale" and "long scale"

message: Nicolas Chuquet is credited as the first person to put down in writing the systematic series of number names byllion, tryllion, quadrilion, etc. But did he use the long scale exclusively? I was fascinated by Robert Munafo's suggestion that Chuquet was inconsistent: . Munafo exhibits a page image showing Chuquet's use of the long scale, and a quotation indicating that he used the short scale. The accuracy of the quotation has, however, been strongly disputed by Michael Chuquet, particularly in Talk:Binary prefix, where he says "One knows that Nicolas Chuquet used the long scale exclusively.... But, a falsified quotation, taken again by hundreds of Web site and a pseudo-scientist 'lucky find' (A double use of Chuquet himself !) let believe the opposite."
I contacted Munafo for the source of the quotation, and he replied:
:It is from an earlier version of the web page http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Chuquet , which I downloaded on the 22nd March 2004. Because it is a Wikipedia article, it is no longer available. 
Yikes! A dubious assertion of fact in Wikipedia was picked up, pruned of Wikipedian attribution by a process of quotation and requotation, promulgated to a number of other websites, and then (alas) picked up by me as a source to reference in working on current Wikipedia articles. The article from which Munafo got the quotation read:
:In 1484 the French mathematician Nicolas Chuquet wrote in his article "Triparty en la science de nombres": Au lieu de dire mille milliers, on dira million, au lieu de dire mille millions, on dira byllion, etc..., et tryllion, quadrilion...octylion, nonyllion, et ainsi des autres si plus oultre on voulait procder.
::Instead of saying thousand thousands, one will say million, instead of saying thousand million, one will say billion, etc..., and trillion, quadrillion, ..., octillion, nonillion, and similar as far as you want to proceed.
The original quote in French was inserted by User:Fantasy .
I've left a query on User:Fantasy's page. There are really two distinct issues here. 
The first is whether the quotation from Chuquet is correct; that is, is there or is there not a passage in Chuquet's work containing the word "au lieu de dire mille millions, on dira byllion?" 
The second is a translation issue.  Anyway, the question is, if the passage is accurately quoted, can it possibly mean anything other than a "byllion" = "mille millions" = "a thousand millions" = 1,000,000,000? Dpbsmith (talk) 12:09, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The quote was wrong--see above under Untitled/Misc. I suppose it was a case of haplography--someone saw "mille milliers de millions" and read it as "mille millions". EricK 22:41, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Tracing the origins of a disputed quotation

message: What would be the best title for a Wikipedia article for the number 1,000,000,000 itself rather than an ambiguous term?? 66.245.102.77 17:46, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps 1000000000 (number).  —AlanBarrett 18:27, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article on the number itself 

message: The term Milliard is obsolete in modern British English. See for example long scale which has had that description for a little while now. Even in the days before the UK adopted the 'short scale' billion, Milliard was extremely rarely used in English - thousand million was far more common. Ian Cairns 23:41, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with you. It is extremely rare - to the point that it is not being used. As a result, the word 'obsolete' seems perfectly appropriate. Ian Cairns 01:17, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

text: Eric. Thanks for that. The point is that even before the British started using the American usage of Billion, we used to call the number 'thousand million' and didn't use the word 'milliard' - which we all associate with continental european languages. To start calling this milliard would represent new usage. I understand that you would like us to use this word, but the simple fact is that the word milliard was hardly ever (if at all) used in British English and never in American English. As such, it is obsolete - hence the article. Thanks 07:24, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I posted a query about this in alt.usage.english and really only got one good reply, but it was a very good one: from Ben Zimmer: Dpbsmith (talk) 00:47, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

text: These are illiterate confusions of the word "milliard" with "myriad", and indicate precisely what tends to happen when the language is permitted to degenerate into meaninglessness.210.235.63.243 12:19, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

text: As an interesting and perhaps controversial side issue, I believe you'll find that any native English speaker who is of the opinion that a "billion" is 10^12 will be familiar with the word "milliard" for 10^9. It is only those who believe that a "billion" is 10^9 who will, inevitably, not require a second word for it. In other words, "milliard" is neither unfamiliar nor (as suggested above) obsolete, but merely known to that class of speakers who adhere to this set of meanings.210.235.63.243 12:19, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Milliard

message: Anyone know how to make the superscripts show in the section titles in the "Contents" box?
--zandperl 02:30, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't, but if you don't get an answer here, you may want to try the village pump or IRC. Rl 06:15, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contents Box 

message: The billion related trivia section is enjoyable, but (forgive my poor maths skills, please) it is unclear which billion this refers to.  It would be great if someone could sort this out.
:I have added some text (though it's a bit clunky) to clarify the sense of the word. Thanks for pointing out that ambiguity. —HorsePunchKid→龜 04:43, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's "magnitude" with an i - not an e. "Magnetude does redirect to Disney Channel but magnitude is a dismabig page with several math / astro / seismology articles. - DavidWBrooks 11:56, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Trivia section ambiguity 

message: I have put "one thousand million or one million million" in the intro sentence for the casual reader who doesn't know that billion has two meanings, and who is spooked by powers of 10. - DavidWBrooks 14:38, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  layman's explanation