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3.2.- Figures.

Números pintados sobre una pared.

In business, it is very frequent to deal with figures or numbers. It's necessary to know big figures in order to understand and produce some messages. In this section we'll study some very big numbers and fractions which will be very useful for us in the business world.

There are some expressions for really figures that you may not know. Let's take a look at them.

  • Hundred: 100
  • Thousand: 1,000
  • Million: 1,000,000. In business, expressions such as a seven figures salary are very common to refer to millionaire quantities.
  • Billion: 1,000,000,000. With huge amounts such as this, people prefer to say 1.5 billion or one point five billion.
  • Trillion: 1,000,000,000,000
  • Quadrillion: 1,000,000,000,000,000
  • Quintillion: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000

Think about it

Take a look at this figure: 3,500,020. Is there anything wrong with it? Do you see any differences with your way of writing figures?
There are even higher numbers, but they are not as common and they are rarely used.

A step ahead

For more information on higher figures, check this link. The highest figures used in maths are in this website.

Standard Dictionary Numbers.

In English, it's not enough to learn how to write a figure, you need to use it correctly in a sentence whether you are speaking or writing. This may sound a bit stupid but there is some differences between English and Spanish in this aspect. Read at the following sentences.

  • Billions of Dollars are spent on drug ads every year.
  • I've got a million friends!
  • The value of this company is three million euros.

If you read the sentences carefully you will find the use of million and billion a bit confusing. In the first sentence, billion is used in the plural: billions. This is part of a not very accurate figure, we don't know how many billions are spent, but we know that it's several, so we use billions.

In the second sentence, we use million in singular form because we refer to 1,000,000 even though it's an idiom and it's not necessarily true. No one has a million friends. Notice also that we do not say "A million of friends".

Finally in the third sentence, we use the word million preceded by a plural expression, in this case the word "three". This is inconceivable in Spanish, after a plural such as "three" we use a plural expression such as "millions". This is not so in English, no matter what is the amount we want to express. The words million, billion, etc, are always used in their singular in normal figures such as 3 million, 45 billion, etc.